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- The End
They died, in the end, together.
There was little difference in a bloodsoaked battlefield in winter or in summer, save perhaps the stench - it was all wrought iron in the back of his throat, like choking on metal, and the burst of bodies beneath his sword strokes. Pretty days didn’t happen when there was a battle on, as pretty jeweled flowers embedded into green grass became trampled underfoot, torn to pieces just like men, and demons, and horses.
When Guts was a child, he’d sat at the edge of a forest with Gambino, and the breeze had been cool, and it was maybe the beginnings of spring, or the edge where fall slipped into winter, and the trees had whispered so prettily as the wind rustled their green leaves. A bird twittered on a branch just above him, fat and blue, a round little ball of feathers, and Guts had smiled.
It wasn’t long after that this battle became the same as any others: no more rustling of the wind through the trees, no more round, fat birds bringing worms to chirping babies, no more cool breeze. There was just screaming, and clanging metal, and the boiling stench of blood.
That was how Guts died the first time.
He thought he would feel something when he looked down at Griffith and saw the blood-flecked foam at the corners of his lips, that he would feel satisfaction that his journey had reached its end. Even though his own blood mingled with Griffith’s, and already he was fading like his vague memories of falling into a decent night’s sleep, this was what he had wanted.
Wasn’t it?
“I told you,” Griffith managed, and Guts remembered a warm summer day, and a pretty face, and a duel for his future, and you’re mine, “That I choose how and when you die.”
There wasn’t even anger left in him anymore. Perhaps there should have been - Casca was screaming his name, from somewhere far away, and Guts thought with some bitter irony that he was happy that as he was dying, Casca might be able to look at him again.
Guts dug the blade deeper into Griffith’s belly, and Griffith groaned, more blood welling up at the soft parting of his lips.
“It was only ever you,” Griffith managed, “At the end, it’s only you.”
It was a warm summer day in Wyndham. There was a bucket of water, and Guts remembered how strange the sound of his own laughter was in his ears. Did he even hate Griffith, still? Did he feel enough to still feel hatred?
In the world that would be reborn around him, around them both, things might be kinder to the people Guts had grown to care about. They did not need him anymore. Farnese was there for Casca when Guts could not be, and it made sense that it would be her who would care for Casca after he died.
“I’m glad,” Griffith said, and Guts felt his intestines spilling out of his own belly, felt them falling into the cavity he’d made in Griffith, bodies mingling in that way they only could on the battlefield, a parody of lovemaking, “That here in the end, we’re together.”
“We were together,” Guts said, “You’re the reason it ended.”
Griffith’s eyes widened. He looked like he was about to speak.
With that, Guts died.
With that, in a world very different from the one Guts knew, he lived again.
- The early years
Time and space become blurry. It takes a while for things to settle, like silt at the bottom of a murky lake. Guts forgets everything - the apostles, the god hand, the eclipse, and in their place he remembers endless battlefields, endless mercenary companies, speaking German, or French, or Italian - he remembers mountains, and lakes, and canons becoming mortar shells, and the first time they put a musket in his hand and not a sword, the way its recoil seems to shudder down to his very bones.
In these early lifetimes, the only thing that feels real is the white haired boy. Sometimes, he's a childhood playmate of Guts', laughter like a bubbling spring, and Guts spends long hours splashing his feet in cold springs with him, hunting rabbits in snares in the woods, and running amongst bales of hay, using sticks for swords. Guts feels like a child with him, full of silly, childish whimsy, and so when it's time to move on to the next campaign it's with lashes on his back and thighs for succumbing to his own innocence.
"Don't go," the white haired boy begs, tears in his pretty eyes, "Please don't leave me, please-"
But Guts is a child, and there's nothing he can do.
He kills the white haired boy, sometimes, when they're both on the cusp of adolescence, because he is leading a revolt amongst the local overburdened peasants and Guts' father has been hired to stop it, and it's only when the sword plunges into his delicate, swan's neck that Guts starts crying, though he isn't sure why.
Sometimes the white haired boy kills him first.
Sometimes they both die of disease, pinkies intertwined as they cough up their own blood in a cold stable somewhere.
Sometimes the boy has his own company, and they travel the countryside, laughing about their dreams and what they'll do with the money they earn, before they're wiped out as part of a greater war.
These lifetimes have echoes of one before, one that ended in blood, in hatred, in despair.
When Guts s reaches out for those memories, they disappear, fading like a fog in the warmth of sunlight.
- 1700s
The white haired boy gets a name, eventually. At some point in time, he's Griffith, and he's the son of a powerful Lord, and Guts doesn't understand what makes him take Guts face in his hands and call him "mine."
Griffith makes Guts feel immense sadness, from a place deep within him that he tried so hard to lock. His soft, child's heart still beats inside of his chest, frozen at a moment at night, in the dark, a body moving suddenly beside him and covering his mouth, and so Guts folds himself in iron. Nothing can pierce iron.
Nothing, except Griffith. The first time they meet, Griffith has a bruise on his cheek, and relief in his eyes, and he says, "It's alright. Getting to keep you this time, it's all alright."
It's the crackling firelight, and the way Griffith waves pamphlets of John Locke's essays in front of Guts, and when Guts rolls his eyes and says, "Lord Griffith, you know I cannot read," Griffith takes his hand and traces the words, life, liberty, and property , speaking them all aloud like a manifestation.
"Sounds like a dream," Guts snorts, skeptical, and Griffith freezes.
This is the first time they fall in love.
Griffith making love to him isn't like that night in his childhood. He smells sweet, and his skin is soft, and his chest rises and falls like he's on the brink of tears, the way he says Guts' name again and again, hushed like prayer. When Guts runs his hand over Griffith's bare arm, over a series of jagged white line scars, Griffith gasps like he'd never felt such a gentle touch before. He shudders, breath becoming staccato, and buries his face in Guts' sweaty neck.
Griffith's father finds them tangled in bed the next morning, and with the same hands that bruised Griffith's cheek on the day they met, and which dunked him into ice water to hide the marks of abuse in his childhood, he orders Guts to be hanged.
"No," Griffith begs him, hysterical with grief, hyperventilating, "No, father, please, not again, I cannot lose him again, please, I'll do anything-"
In the lavish bedrooms that Griffith has been locked in, overlooking the gallows in the courtyard, he strangles his father to death with his bare hands. He forces his way through the doors, guarded by two infantrymen, and they tackle him to the ground as he screams , human and helpless as a baby bird.
As the hangman lets him drop, Guts hears a plea for forgiveness from Griffith, traveling on the wind.
- The Great War
Guts is the son of a stablehand, Griffith is the son of a cook in a lavish estate somewhere on the border of France and Germany. This time, they live out their childhood as children ought to, playing games during the long summer daylight hours, chasing each other through the estate, laughing and learning to read and being swathed in innocence.
When Guts is nine, the family who owns the estate has over a guest that he's never seen before. That guest, late at night, slips inside Guts' room, and nothing is the same afterwards. Guts is angry, with his family, with the estate, even with Griffith - it hurts to hear Griffith cry and ask why he's being so mean all of a sudden, but Guts can't understand it himself.
They send him to reform school, across the border, where he stays for many long years, and where he's beaten more times in a month than he can count, and he grows angrier and ever angrier.
When the war breaks out, he enlists just to escape.
Guts doesn't know why war feels like such a familiar bedfellow to him - the shouts of battle, the screams, the blood and bodies torn to bits. His childhood was normal, the only war stories those in books. The mechanization of it all is new to him, the rattling of machine gun fire like rain on a tin roof - even he is frightened by it. It seems to chip away at him, bit by little bit, and he thinks of those summer days with Griffith, and how dear they were to him.
He dies alongside a thousand other men, on a day where his casualty hardly even matters. It's quick, but not instantaneous, when a mortar bursts around him and rips him into half a dozen pieces.
Guts thinks of how happy he was, before that night when he was nine, and how it felt like all the happiness was sucked out of him. He remembers, inexplicably, dozens of campfires, each one like a flickering dream, a bit of hope clung to on a dark, cold night. It's strange, though, that thought, because he's never been around a campfire all his life.
In the echoing darkness right before he vanishes completely, he hears an achingly familiar voice screaming, "No, Guts, no, I didn't mean to-"
- World War II
Her name was Casca.
The moment Guts met her in 1942 in Marrakesh, there was something like the click of a key falling into place in a lock, a rush of something like relief - he’d only ever felt that once, the day Griffith had wrestled him to the ground, and then held out his hand with that sunbeam smile on his lips to help him back up.
Guts wasn’t sure why he’d felt that when he met Griffith, considering Griffith at first glance had seemed like the typical well-polished fascist brats who treated Guts with all the dignity of the scum beneath their shoe, the pretty ones too delicate for the nasty business of murdering slavs or otherwise in Europe, so they were sent to North Africa for a government-funded vacation.
It was something about the look in his eyes, in the white blonde of his hair, the way he seemed to shine in the way men did in pastoralist propaganda posters.
Griffith was not German, though. Griffith was Czech, and he spoke of Prague like a grieving widow, which Guts learned when Griffith strongarmed him into his next meeting with the French resistance in Morocco.
Griffith took each of the resistance fighter’s hands and thanked them, one by one, in French, in Czech, in Arabic, and he dabbed at their eyes personally when they wept over their fallen comrades. Afterwards, Griffith told Guts that if he did not commit himself, the police here were always trying to interrogate him about his comrades in the resistance, and he might just give them Guts' name
Why was that so familiar?
Guts hated fascists the same as he hated any powerful bastards who tried to stomp helpless people under their foot, and he felt - it could not have been in this life, where even as a child he couldn’t remember wanting anything better for himself, because there was no point in dreaming and asking for things that were impossible. Love, safety, control over his own body - stupid dreams, pointless hopes.
So why did he remember a dream, and a time long past, and thinking, for the very first time, that maybe better was possible?
Casca was the only woman in this particular group of French resistance fighters, and the moment Guts felt his heart settle, like a missing piece falling into place, she immediately tried to beat him over the head with a plank of wood.
“Who are you?” Casca shouted, as Guts frantically blocked the beating with his arms over his head, “How did you get in here? I’ll call the police, I’ll-”
“Casca!” There was Griffith, smiling as always, stilling her instantly with a gentle hand on her back. Guts’ stomach lurched. Why? Why did he feel such a sudden surge of anger? “Casca, sweetheart, he’s fine! He’s with me. I think he’s going to be such an asset.”
“Griffith,” Casca breathed, black eyes wide and awe-struck, like looking up at a god. “I, oh.”
She wore pants, in a casual, tomboyish way, and her hair was cropped even shorter than the fashionable style Guts had seen among those who held to French norms - she carried herself with dignity, not dressed as she was as an act of rebellion, just… Something practical. She blushed easily, prettily, looking up at Griffith - Griffith, who had not taken his eyes off of Guts since he entered the room.
“We meet,” Griffith explained, “At her family’s inn. She’s been a great help to all of us here.”
Casca played with a strand of her own hair bashfully. Guts felt a pang, watching that - again, he could not have said why. She seemed so self-assured here, in Griffith’s presence, like a flower being coaxed gently to bloom.
“Guts,” Griffith said, an edge to his voice. Guts blinked and looked back to him, his body suddenly uncomfortable in its bulk, like he’d forgotten where his limbs were spatially. He’d been staring at Casca, he noticed, and in his cheeks came an unfamiliar warmth. “Shall we? I have some things to discuss with you.”
“I want to help,” Casca said, gripping Griffith’s arm, “You know I can help.”
Griffith finally turned to her, smile fixed in place, taking her shoulders tenderly in hand, “I do. Thank you, Casca, but not tonight. I need you here.”
“Oh,” Casca sighed, disappointed, “Of course.”
Guts feels like he's known Casca all his life. Casca brings Guts to the roof of her family's in, her hand so much smaller in his, and Guts thinks of how he's never had to be gentle with anyone before. Up here, they can look out over the whole medina, look at the glowing lights of shops and houses like crackling firelight. It's private, quiet, and Casca feels so warm as she kisses him.
"I've never done that before," she giggles. Then, she kisses him again, and they make love like that under the stars, her body melting against his sweetly. It's so different to being with a man, and he relishes exploring those differences, until Casca is panting and batting his hand away, breathless with laughter.
The city ripples and writhes beneath them, and at the edges of it there's a dark ocean of sand that the light doesn't touch.
"I've never left Casablanca," Casca admits, "But some day... Once this damned war ends, I'd love to see the world."
Guts shrugs. "I grew up on ships with my dad. It's how I wound up here. The world is..." Frightening. Hostile. So, so big I'm worried it might swallow me up. "I'd take you, if you wanted me to. I'd go with you."
Casca smiles. "I'd like that."
The closer Casca and Guts get, the more possessive Griffith becomes. Guts doesn't know why, because he damn well knows Casca will give her life to Griffith if it means seeing her city free, and yet that's what happens.
He always seems to appear during the stolen moments Guts and Casca find, wrapping his arms around both their shoulders and asking to join. Its irritating enough that Guts has half a mind to ask Casca if Griffith is allowed in bed with them, just so they can fuck again.
When Guts complains about this to Casca, she just sighs and says, "They had him in a concentration camp for a while, you know? Before he fled to Morocco. I think it makes him hold onto people, to ideas, that much more intensely. That's all it is."
During one meeting of the resistance, Griffith brushes a strand of hair away from Casca's eyes, as he's done a million times before.
Casca gasps and flinches away, her eyes suddenly filled with all the terror of the damned in front of the devil himself. In an instant, the moment passes, but everyone is left shocked - no one moreso than Casca herself.
"I'm so sorry," she gasps, gripping Griffith's arm, pleading, "You... You must just have startled me. It's been-"
"Stressful," Griffith smiles, easily, "You have a lot on your mind. I understand."
Casca nods, smiling shakily.
It happens again. Once, twice, three times - the very sight of Griffith seems to send Casca into a fit of terror, her eyes going glassy, as though remembering something long forgotten, unearthing a deeply buried wound. Each time, Casca is hysterical with remorse, saying she really doesn't understand why, she's so sorry, Griffith. Griffith, each time, smiles sweetly and kisses her forehead, saying its no trouble, that he understands.
"You sure he didn't try anything funny?" Guts asks suspiciously.
"Of course not," Casca gasps. "He would never."
And so it continues - the jealousy, the moments of terror, the fracturing of it all in the midst of shooting Nazi officers in cafes and blowing up their cargo shipments.
One night, Guts and Casca have planned a quiet evening, just the two of them. As though through a sixth sense of aggravation, Griffith appears. Casca flinches. Casca apologizes.
Griffith says, "Casca, how do you feel about helping with a mission tonight?"
The war on Casca's face is so stark - stay in and be cozy with Guts, or help the resistance. Guts knows in an instant, even with the pain on Casca's face, what Casca will choose - and he suspects Griffith knows, as well.
"Well," Griffith sighs once she's gone, "No need to waste the wine."
"You know," Guts says, more than a little irritated, "If you wanted Casca to yourself, she'd easily pick you. I don't know why you go through all this trouble."
Griffith's smile is quiet, a little sad. The wine isn't being wasted; they hadn't even uncorked it yet. Griffith does so, then pours himself a glass, then offers one to Guts.
"It's nice, having her here again," Griffith murmurs, "I suppose... I underestimated how she would feel about you."
"Huh?"
"It's nothing," Griffith shakes his head, and here in Casablanca, it was the first time they met, but somehow Guts remembers playing with sticks and pretending they were swords, and he remembers a campfire, and somehow, beneath it all, deep, burning hatred-
The glass shatters in his hand. Guts gasps, red wine mingling with blood from the cut.
Griffith is staring at him oddly. He takes Guts' hand in his, dabbing at the cuts gently, thoughtfully, with a cloth.
"I see," he whispers. "I think I may have misunderstood."
Griffith kisses him. Guts' mind goes blank, the burning anger vanishing like morning mist.
"Wait," Guts breathes, "Casca-"
The anger is back.
Griffith kisses him harder, it vanishes again. They fuck in the place where Guts was supposed to fuck Casca, and it feels like he's done this before, because there's a cozy familiarity to it, and strangely he's not angry with Griffith.
This feels like coming home, and it feels like this is something the three of them could share. Guts isn't sure how he knows it, but he doesn't think Casca will be angry, not as they all are now.
It's dark when they finish, the lights outside dimmed, and Griffith clings tight to him in a show of emotion he rarely allows himself, the furrow of his brow deep enough that Guts feels it against his chest.
The night is dark.
Casca isn't back yet. Wasn't this supposed to be quick? When she got back, Guts thought he might simply bite the bullet and ask her to join them, because he's had enough of this back and forth.
Griffith shoots up and says, voice childlike and confused, "I think I've made a mistake."
"Ouch," Guts tries to brush off his hurt, "You're the one who-"
Griffith is already getting dressed, clutching his heart like it's on fire in his chest, blinking wildly. He murmurs in rapid Czech into a phone on the wall. He runs out the door, leaving Guts behind.
Griffith isn't even the one to tell Guts.
It's one of the others, tears thick in his throat as he explains the basics: mission gone wrong. Casca was caught in the crossfire - she ran back to save one of her comrades.
Three resistance fighters died.
Casca was one of them.
The rage Guts feels is indescribable.
"You," he roars, the next time he sees Griffith, "You did this to her-"
"It was a casualty of the job," Griffith says, looking Guts in the eye, nothing there but ice, and the hatred burns even if Guts senses the unsure warble in his voice, "She knew it was dangerous. She would want you to-"
"What's wrong with you?" Guts snarls, "She trusted you, and you-"
"Do you think I wanted this?" Griffith bursts out, "To think, when I was finally getting it right, to know I've failed yet again? Do you have any idea what that's like?"
Guts remembers, there's something there, bits and pieces floating to the surface from that awful look. Eyes, cold as ice, and Casca, she's-
" Griffith ," Guts roars, a primal scream from another lifetime, and in an instant he's on him, and they're grappling with each other, Guts' fist connecting with Griffith's face, and that feels familiar too. "You did this to her-"
The guilt that bursts inside of him is horrible.
Casca, dying cold and alone, because in that moment with the wine, and Griffith's face flickering like a thousand scenes converging all at once, Guts could only think of him. Casca behind him on an island where everything flickered like fireflies, but all Guts could see was Griffith, and he could feel was rage, even if that rage was from Casca's screaming echoing in his ears-
He had been so sure Casca would have wanted him and Griffith together, and now he's equally sure that he's done something horrible by letting her slip away. This happened because he trusted Griffith, this happened because he was weak, but Griffith couldn't have known, so why, why is the anger pulsing through him with such violence he feels his blood might burst from his eye sockets?
Griffith is on his back. Griffith is bleeding. Underneath him, Guts feels Griffith move, and before he can even register what's happening, the gunshot rings out in Casca's family's inn.
Guts feels what he thinks is a punch to the gut - and then the pain hits.
Griffith looks horrified. Tears well up in his eyes. Guts is crying too, he realizes belatedly. Griffith mouths something, and it looks like I'm sorry -
Everything goes black.
- 1960s
When Guts and Griffith meet as children in the orphanage, one of many that sprung up in the bloody aftermath of the war, the first thing Griffith says is that he’s looking for his sister.
“Her name is Casca,” Griffith explains, with all the seriousness of a ten year old, “Here’s me,” he draws himself in pink crayon, a stick figure with yellow hair because the box doesn’t have anything close to his actual white, like on the night his parents died he was scared colorless, “And here’s my sister.”
The girl he draws is another stick figure, this one with the brown crayon, and with black hair noticeably shorter than Griffith’s, like she’s the boy and he’s the girl. Both he and Casca have dots for eyes and smiling red mouths. They’re holding hands, and around them he draws a field of flowers, and he gives the sun a bright red smile as well, his pink tongue stuck out in determination.
Did Guts know a Casca from his little town in France, back at the very beginnings of his memory? The name seems familiar.
“You’re gonna help me find her,” Griffith demands, crossing his arms over his chest. “She’s important.”
“Uh,” Guts says, “Okay.”
Casca never shows up at the orphanage. Griffith asks, again and again, of the teachers, of the administrators, of the staff where she might be. They grow, Griffith sprouting up like a daisy, leaning over Guts teasingly while Guts huffs and stands on his toes.
“I’ll be taller one day,” Guts vows, brows set in anger, “You wait!”
“I’m sure you will,” Griffith giggles.
After the war, everyone is angry. Husbands who lost wives, mothers who lost children, children who lost parents - no one has time for the weeping masses of orphans collected in dingy, overcrowded homes, no bleeding hearts look to them with pity. There’s an orderly at the orphanage who frightens Guts, and who frequently finds excuses to lash his palms with a ruler until he cries.
When he’s on duty, Griffith tells Guts that they should have a sleepover, and Guts pretends he isn’t relieved, because he’s almost eight, and he’s almost grown up. They hide underneath the mattress in their shared bedroom and giggle the whole night while his roommate sleeps, and when the orderly opens the door with a vicious creak, Griffith covers Guts’ mouth like they’re sharing a secret.
One of the beds - the one belonging to their third roommate - creaks.
And creaks again.
Griffith, the whole while, covers Guts’ mouth, even after it’s no longer fun and Guts wriggles because it’s getting hard to breathe.
This happens again and again, and Guts is afraid, even though he doesn’t understand why.
One day, Griffith is in the infirmary with the flu, and not in the room, when this orderly is making his rounds.
The door opens.
Guts’ mattress dips. It makes an over-loud creaking sound, like tires screeching before a crash.
After that night, Guts understands why he was so afraid every time the orderly got close to him.
The shame is all consuming. It layers itself over Guts like thick fog, so that he can hardly see his own hands in front of his face.
He gets angry. He fights. Griffith says that he doesn’t understand what’s wrong. Guts tells him to fuck off, and when Griffith reaches out to hold his hand, he punches him clean across the face.
“But you said,” Griffith’s voice warbles. It’s just barely started to break with adolescence. “You said you’d help me find my sister.”
“Fuck your sister,” Guts snaps. “And fuck you too.”
He runs away.
Years pass. He feels caught in a loop. There are memories of Griffith’s big blue eyes, pleading him not to leave, over what seem like decades - over time, and space, the same pleas repeating again and again. Don’t leave me, Guts, don’t leave me.
Why would he ever have wanted to leave Griffith? Why, again and again, did he run away, crushed by guilt, by shame, by anger? Pain, going back generations, seeps into his pores, causes cracks in his bones, making every step throb and ache. Why does he feel as though he’s lived a hundred lifetimes, sick with shame in each of them? It hurts, it fucking hurts.
Nearly a decade passes, and by pure serendipity, he sees Griffith again.
Griffith’s eyes widen. He looks just as lovely as the day Guts ran off.
He says, like he can hardly believe it, “Guts, it is you, isn’t it?”
They fall into bed, and it’s like they haven’t spent any time apart at all. It feels like they’ve done this before, each time precious like a tiny china figurine, one placed after another. Guts is somehow not afraid that it’ll hurt, not like it did that first time, because… Because he knows what sleeping with Griffith is like.
It’s like coming home.
“What made you run away?” Griffith asks, and Guts shrugs, feeling the swoop of shame in his gut.
“Did you ever find your sister?” Guts asks, and Griffith shrugs.
They get a little apartment together. It’s cozy. It’s nice.
It feels like being suddenly made aware that the path Guts is on is not the one he’s tread before.
Guts says, “We need to find Casca.”
In the end, they do.
It is not a happy thing.
Casca is sweet. She's kind.
She is desperately, miserably sad.
This world has not been kind to any of them, but through it Guts and Griffith found solace in each other, while Casca seems cloaked in loneliness.
It's with almost a childish hopefulness that Casca agrees to meet with Griffith and Guts in a little café, and she keeps nervously tucking her hair behind her ears, and Guts can picture so vividly an image of Griffith doing that for her, giving her a gentle smile all the while. It's strange he has that image with adult Griffith, when they were separated as children.
She is sitting, primly, in the little outdoor spot, with a child sweetly in her lap.
"I'm sorry," Casca's cheeks are pink with embarrassment, as she reaches to shake Guts and Griffith's hands, "My neighbor couldn't watch him."
They drink coffee. Casca takes hers black, and makes fun of how much sugar Griffith put in his.
"I know," Guts rolls his eyes, "Shouldn't it be the other way around? Griffith, you drink a woman's coffee."
Casca narrows her eyes. "And what exactly does that mean?"
Guts blanches. "Uh…"
The child is three, and Casca is nineteen.
"I'm sorry," Casca says again, laughing self consciously, "What you said over the phone… I'm afraid I don't remember much about the children's home."
It's a sad reunion, and it reminds Guts of his own life so much it hurts. He remembers the jealousy he felt when he found out that Griffith had managed to attend university, that he was working as a clerk in the office of a civil rights lawyer, that he was able to climb his way out from the children's homes, from the shame, from poverty.
It's much the same for Casca as for Guts - from children's home to children's home, ever lonely, ever desperate for companionship, at the mercy of those in charge.
They'd kicked her out when she got pregnant at sixteen, and she spent some time in a miserable home for unwed mothers, and shame followed her like a shadow, and that shame clung to every strand of her hair, every pretty lash around her tired brown eyes. She'd been like a big sister to the women there, she explains, but that meant she made herself the target for any pain, any humiliation, any anger the staff might want to take out on someone.
She became so, so tired. It was so easy to become tired, living like that every day.
"Oh, Casca, I wish I'd found you sooner," Griffith sounds wracked with sadness. Guts has never seen him display so much emotion in his life, "I'm so proud of you. I'm glad, even without me, that you were able to help those women."
Casca cries.
"I'm sorry," she says again, sounding shocked even through her tears, "I don't… I don't know what this is. This is very kind of you. I don't know why I'm-"
"Has anyone ever said they're proud of you?" Griffith asks, raising an eyebrow.
"No," Casca laughs, and it sounds so, so sad. "What is there to be proud of?"
Later, in Casca's apartment, she says that the orderlies at her children's home frightened her too.
"You would hear the door creak open," she laughs, again so sadly, "You would hear their footsteps. Then-"
"They would sit on your bed," Guts finishes for her, because she looks like she might cry again, "And you would just lay there, not breathing, hoping they would go away. That they wouldn't-"
"Yes," Casca nods, "Yes, that."
Griffith stares at Guts, like he's someone entirely made new in front of him.
Guts tucks Luke into bed. Luke grabs his nose and squeezes it until it hurts, and Guts feels such a rush of fatherly affection, like this is his own child. The world will be kinder to him than it was to any of them, Guts promises.
Casca has a bruise on her cheek. Guts notices it as the night wears on, and her foundation begins to fade. He thinks of Griffith, his hair pulled back, a dark bruise on his cheek. When was that from? Not in the time Guts had known him, certainly.
Griffith is the one who asks, subdued, "Casca, who did that?"
"I can take care of myself," Casca snaps, and it's the first sign of anger she's shown. She blinks, as though startled at her own heat.
"I know you can," Griffith says, because he's better about this kind of thing than Guts is, "But please tell me who did this."
Casca shrugs. She's wearing her shame like a cloak again. "Ex boyfriend. He's gone now. I don't have very good taste in men."
Guts feels his stomach twist. "Well you don't have to worry about us," he says, overly casual, "Since we're both gay."
He winces immediately after. For the first time, that doesn't quite feel right - not because he's not attracted to Griffith, but this feels-
Casca smiles at him gently, taking his hand. Guts doesn't know why he felt safe enough to tell her that, or the thing before.
Luke reaches out towards Guts in his sleep, his hands tiny and chubby, and something stirs in him, something from so long ago, another life-
"I didn't know, Guts," Griffith says, some time later, not looking at him, "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you just get angry and push me away?"
Guts snaps, "And how did you know to hide under the bed when the orderly came by?" Griffith doesn't respond. "Exactly."
Griffith says, changing the subject, "If I'd known how unhappy Casca was, I could have stopped it. I could have done something. Imagining her pregnant… I could have…"
"At age what, nineteen?" Guts says dubiously, "You always have such a big head."
"I did it once," Griffith whispers, "but for so long I thought she would be happier if I left her alone."
They make plans for Casca. She and Luke will move in with the two of them, a cozy shared flat in the city. They'll look after her. All of the bad things, they were in the past, and she doesn't need to worry about them anymore.
"I had so many dreams," Casca says to Guts, breathless with the possibilities, "I hope, maybe now… I wanted to finish high school, at least."
It's autumn when Guts, on a whim, walks down the street where Casca lives.
There are police officers outside her apartment.
Dread seeps into his bones.
"What's happened?" He demands, gripping the officer's arm despite himself. Police officers have never been his friend, not since… Was it in Morocco, and the police, their brown shirts, enforcers of… Wait, when was he ever in Morocco? "Did something happen to Casca? Tell me!"
It's then that he notices the entrance to the building, paramedics bringing out something… Two bodies, covered in sheets - one large, one very, very little. There's just the faintest brownish on the larger one, seeping through the sheets, like she's still bleeding out and could still be saved.
After that, everything becomes very disjointed - Guts loses track of time, feeling as though he's lost the love of his life, feeling as though he might if Griffith was murdered in front of him, even though he's hardly known her for a few weeks-
"Her ex boyfriend," Guts hears Griffith explain as though from underwater, and he sees the way Griffith clasps his own arms, nails digging bloody lines into his skin, and Guts had always wondered where the fine lines on his bicep came from, "She didn't tell us he'd been lurking around her apartment. She didn't… He tried to take Luke from her. They fought. He got angry."
"One moment of anger," Guts whispers, shaking all over, "And he could just… Her, her child… One moment of anger."
Griffith doesn't speak for a very long time. In fact, he doesn't speak at all.
"Well if you're not going to fucking do anything," Guts spits, unsure where this violent anger at Griffith is coming from, "I'll find him. I'll kill him. I'll - her fucking baby, Griffith. She wanted to finish high school."
Guts does kill him. Griffith tracks him down. He has a plan, meticulous and thorough, but Guts is just too fucking angry, and he acts on impulse.
He beats the ex boyfriend until his face is mashed into a bloody pulp on the pavement. The ex boyfriend is with a bunch of friends at a bar when Guts finds him. They don't intervene until there is nothing left of him above the neck but mush, because it all happens so fast, but then-
Guts remembers a sword taller than himself, remembers monsters as far as the eye can see, cutting them down easy as breathing. He remembers wars, broken bodies, cutting down enemy after enemy, and he doesn't know why, but he feels it's ironic that in this world only four men can take him down.
I couldn't protect you , he thinks, feeling the weight of lifetimes, and maybe that's why he stops struggling, even as he feels the first blow from the wooden plank, just detritus on the side of the road.
He dies en route to the hospital, Griffith by his side, holding his hand, bent double with grief, a man on the absolute precipice. His hand clenches his arm so hard it bleeds.
"Don't," Guts whispers, "Please."
He doesn't hear what Griffith says after that.
- 1980s
In a very different world, a world where instead of astral beings churning the earth, pulverizing bodies to ash, it's nuclear bombs - where bullets rip off limbs in much the same way a troll's teeth might dig in and tear flesh, Griffith lived in an unending loop of deja vu.
The memories trickled in slowly over the years, only appearing at the moment his brain might be able to process it, or at the age at which it happened, regardless of if he'd processed it in that first lifetime, what felt like an age ago.
He found Casca in this lifetime at the age of seven, so Casca was four. With early computers, and with a world more caring of child welfare than many others he'd inhabited, this time it was trivial to find her, to find her family. Griffith wondered sometimes why, no matter who they were born to, in what country, in what time, they all kept their names, but he did not allow himself to think on it too deeply, because that would not help.
The future, their intertwining paths, was fuzzy in Griffith's mind, because their interconnection involved things that his child's mind couldn't comprehend. At this point, it was all blurred, like vague outlines in the fog.
Griffith saw her for the first time that same year. He'd never seen Casca so young before, and in this lifetime, she was tiny and chubby, her black hair in two pigtails sticking up on the top of her head, a well-loved doll in her hands as she scooped sand with a pink plastic shovel at the playground. Gingerly, Griffith sat down beside her, scooping the sand in the sandbox with his bare hands, feeling the throb of his heart in his chest.
Casca shyly offered Griffith her shovel, and when their hands brushed as he took it, he felt the familiar swoop of emotions, that first lifetime condensed into one painful burst. She put her hands on his cheeks, and Griffith noticed he was crying.
When Casca was seven, she was put into foster care. With her mother's addiction, it was unlikely that she'd ever go back home. The Schaals were a wealthy, childless, philanthropic couple in West Berlin. Mrs. Schaal wrote for a women's magazine, and in painfully honest columns described her inability to have children, the hollowness of her heart and how she and her husband had begun to look into adoption. It just so happened that on the day Casca went to the zoo with her foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. Schaal were there being welcomed for an environmental conservation award.
A hundred little coincidences, things seeming to fall into place in just the right way. Casca's adoptive parents could afford to send her anywhere, of course, but wasn't it more fulfilling when the director of the Berlin University of the Arts just happened to be told of a promising young high school student giving a gallery exhibition, and when he saw the quality of her work, couldn't help but to convince her to apply?
So Casca lived in this way, adored by her parents, living peacefully even in a city torn as Berlin was, spending long hours applying herself to paintings with bright, bold colors, to sculptures in clay and and carved from marble and bent wrought iron - to printing zines with her university friends against nuclear war, and fostering stray dogs with the local shelter, and writing (quite bad) slam poetry about the hole in the ozone layer.
The only grief in her life was her first university boyfriend, who passed away tragically when he slipped off a ledge after a night of drinking. Casca buried herself in her art to cope with his death, with the complicated, roiling emotions inside of her, sculpting storms, and swirling winds, and strangely, what might have been a solar eclipse - she'd loved him, and the night he'd died had been not long after their first real fight, where he'd gotten drunk and struck her across the face.
For Griffith, things played out not so differently as they had a dozen times before. In the foster home, he and Guts grew close, each iteration of Guts more and more sweetly innocent. Even now, when death by infection seemed practically a thing of the past, and doctors could reattach blown-off limbs in such a way that they actually worked as before, children suffered - anyone small, and weak, and unable to defend themselves could become prey, because powerful men had not changed so much in all the lifetimes Griffith had lived.
Still, the battles Guts fought were smaller now, tiny stands against injustice, against large, impersonal systems surrounding him like a thicket of brambles. He was not a child soldier in a mercenary company, just a foster child shuffled from place to place like cargo.
Griffith followed him as best he could. In some ways, with everything bureaucratic, it was harder to fight. It was harder for him to simply show up at Guts' new foster home and demand to stay there.
He didn't know if he kept Guts from being violated as a child, and he suspected it would be many long years before Guts told him, if at all. Guts, when he was young, really was so fragile.
He supposed he didn't know about Casca's safety as a sure thing, either, but at least with her he knew he'd set up her life surrounded by love, and hopefully that would be enough.
It was interesting how Guts reacted to falling for Griffith in each lifetime, as well, and how in some ways those lifetimes hundreds of years ago had him less self conscious about his attraction to men. In this lifetime, Guts kissed Griffith for the first time at fifteen, swearing he wasn't gay the whole while, and using some choice unpleasant words for gay as he did so.
Eventually, everything settled into place, as it had in those lifetimes before. Guts grew unselfconscious about himself, and they moved into a little flat together.
Guts never seemed to remember the first lifetime. It was a blessing, wasn't it? Just Guts and him, unencumbered by the past. Those wonderful days, long and sweet, breathless with dreams and possibilities. Griffith had imagined it, his kingdom, Guts beside him, Casca beside him-
His dream-
The flat was right across the street from the gallery where Casca had an upcoming installation, and if it was popular enough she might even become a permanent fixture. They kept being brought together, and it made Griffith wonder… All those lifetimes, where was she? If only he'd known, from the start…
"We should go," Guts offered, eyeing the flier posted outside, because of course he did. Griffith, in these loops, wanted nothing more than to keep Guts, and then to keep Casca, to himself. Yet, when he tried that, she died, and the loop closed itself, tossing them all carelessly to the next one. Griffith felt the moment she died in Casablanca, and finally, finally he'd understood something new, something he hadn't considered before.
"Since when do you care about art?" Griffith teased, nudging Guts.
The next played out just as it had in the previous lifetime - they went to the gallery. Casca was there, of course.
It was - it was a funny moment, wasn't it? So like them. Guts struck up a conversation with her, not knowing it was her art, about how pretentious he thought it was.
"Pretentious?" Casca snapped, turning the heads of half the people there. "What do you know about art?"
The fashion of the day suited Casca greatly. Griffith imagined how comfortable she must be here, in a time and a place where her normal mode of dress and haircut did not put her out of place. Acid wash jeans looked wonderful on her, and so did bright pastel eyeshadow.
Griffith stepped in to stop Casca from beating Guts over the head with the statue on display.
From there, things blossomed like flower buds after a cool spring rain, as they always did between them.
Casca started liking Griffith more than Guts, which… Oh, Casca had hated Guts so much in those early days, in that first lifetime, and Griffith had never really understood why.
She'd been so dear to him, just a darling of a girl, dependable as the sword at his side. He'd never imagined a future without her - the long days and nights fighting for such a precious dream. The things he'd done, the things he'd hid from her, the times the ugliness of the world was opened up in front of her, and how he'd hated her seeing him like that-
It wasn't right to feel, not when he wanted, not when what he needed to do was-
In all these squishy, human lifetimes, he felt. When Guts' sword pierced his heart, it pierced the ice, and he could not make the blood go back in.
Just as in Casablanca, Casca started to remember first, before Guts did. Was it because of how much longer she'd known him in that first lifetime?
It had felt so good to have someone idolize him, when he felt sick at the deaths, at the way he'd fucked older men for money, the way-
And how could she ever idolize him after seeing him like that, in the cell? He'd always imagined, she'd always been there-
She moved into a flat with the two of them, around the same time the memories started to come back. On the day she moved in, Guts accidentally discovered a prescription for antidepressants among her things, looking for her toothpaste because she wondered if she'd left it at her old place.
"You must think I'm so silly," she said with a self conscious laugh. "I've lived such a charmed life - my mother always told me she thought I had a guardian angel looking out for me, so I'm not sure why…"
Guts shrugged. "Sometimes shit sucks," he said, in all his eloquence.
Casca laughed.
They all had sex for the first time in their shared bed, Griffith with his face between Casca’s legs, and Casca with her face between Guts’s. It did not feel overcrowded, like Griffith thought it might, and he held Guts’ hand the whole while as he ate Casca out, and he felt the throb from when Guts came and squeezed his hand hard. Then, again, Griffith made love to Guts, and Guts buried his face in Casca’s neck the whole time, nails making tiny, tender white lines in her back, and Casca laughed and said, “It tickles.”
Guts was so sensitive during sex, like an entirely new man, with his heart laid bare and beating outside of his chest. He always had been. What did sex mean to him when his first experience of it had been by force, as a child?
What had it meant to Casca, as a woman fiercely guarding her virginity in a world where any number of vile creatures, human and otherwise, wanted nothing more than to snatch it away?
Griffith found out later that Guts and Casca had slept together in the days leading up to his rescue, but had it crossed his mind that he was the one who had stolen it, that maybe Casca’s first time had been when he’d-
The first time Casca flinched away from him, then instantly apologized, said it must have been the stress from the new art installation, Griffith steeled himself. He'd known this day was coming, and he knew he had to face it, though he still couldn't quite imagine how.
"Damn," Guts said, a dazed look on his face, as though lost in thought, "What's this new phase in your art about?"
What was once bright and colorful, vibrant and vivacious, as full of life as Casca was became dark and disturbing, purple and brown and red paint in thick splatters like textured gore, and in all of them - a hawk, looming over the canvas.
Was this what she saw? Griffith hardly remembered her-
"I keep having these nightmares," Casca huffed at Guts, gripping a spot over her breast absently. "I don't know why. Does this hawk represent Gorbachev, maybe? No, why would-"
Griffith could fix this. All of them together, just like those days, and all of them with their dreams, and this would be the end of it. He could say-
Casca's mother showed up one day, not too long after the move. It was incongruous, thinking of Casca as someone's child, thinking of someone tucking Casca in with sweet maternal warmth.
"You seemed so upset over the phone, sweet pea," Mrs. Schaal cooed, and Guts got that glazed over look on his face again, like he was seeing something in the way Casca's mother wrapped an extra shawl around her shoulders and tapped her on the nose.
"This is embarrassing, mom," Casca whined.
"Why?" Mrs. Schaal said with a flourish of her hand towards Guts and Griffith, "You're a modern woman. You can have two boyfriends if you like." Then, with a shudder, "Are you sure everything is alright? I'm not used to you painting things quite this scary. What's with this bird monster's eyes?"
Casca shook her head, thoughtfully. "No," she said, staring at her own paintings as though transfixed. "No eyes. He didn't… He didn't look at me."
A pause. Mrs. Schaal froze, and Casca continued quickly, "A nightmare! In this nightmare, that is."
How soon would it all happen, the merging of all their lives, memories seeping in like the cold?
Griffith knew it would happen, but he still wasn't prepared for how it ended.
Casca, in the depths of her despair, trembled on the ledge of their tenth story apartment building, the wind making her long nightdress ripple around her legs, her thin ankles.
Guts had been wrecked the day he arrived at Casca's apartment in that lifetime not long ago to find the police, to find Casca’s and her son’s bodies being carried out carelessly, indelicately, not like the precious things they were. Griffith remembered holding Casca tenderly on an island far across the veil, feeling the gossamer nightdress stained red at her breast, fragile as a doll in his arms as he stole her away.
How could anyone-
How-
He had-
One moment of anger. That was what Guts had said, before he’d been beaten to death. And he could just… Her, her child… One moment of anger.
This time, it was Guts, and Griffith, and police officers and a crowd underneath their building, someone screaming, “She’s going to jump!”
“Guts,” Griffith cried out, already feeling this world slip away, “Call her from that payphone, now. I’ll go up to her.”
“Casca,” Guts screamed, barely managing to listen, “Casca, it’s us, Casca! We’re coming, please-”
The phone rang, and rang, and rang inside the apartment.
She wasn’t picking up.
When Griffith entered the room, Casca screamed and nearly lost her footing on the ledge outside, but she clung tight to it, and Griffith thought good. Good. There’s a chance. She’s still holding on. She’s-
“Casca,” Griffith called out to her, hands up in a gesture of comfort, the terror in her eyes wild and animal, primal back to the very beginning of humanity, nothing but instinct and threat, “Casca. You don’t have to talk to me, but Guts is calling on the phone from downstairs. Don’t you want to talk to him?”
Casca shook her head hysterically. Her breath came in shallow pants and gasps, her eyes leaked like a stuck faucet, and she clung to the window ledge so hard her nail beds had started to bleed. She trembled, convulsing like a seizure, raw with terror.
She sobbed, “I don't want him to look.”
Griffith didn’t understand.
Then he did.
He should not have come up here. This was a mistake, an awful, horrible mistake, and this was going to kill her, and they would need to start all over again.
“You remember now,” Griffith said, slowly, “You, all of it?”
Casca didn’t answer. Her hand was clutching the spot above her breast, her nails digging in, making it bleed, a bright red stain into her white nightdress.
“This world isn’t like that one,” Griffith didn’t try to stop the pleading note in his voice. “There are scary things in it, but there aren’t monsters. We’re all humans. All of us. Think about your life here, about your art, about your family. Aren’t you happy?”
Casca’s laugh was a brittle, fragile thing. “Yes, I’m happy.” Then, “I was happy in that life, too. It’s amazing, how a dream can brighten the darkest night. It can make you warm when there isn’t even wood to burn. A dream, a beautiful, beloved dream, nurtured from the day you saved me.”
The laugh turned wet, a hacking cough that broke off into gut-churning sobs.
“Where did it go, Griffith? It was ripped from my hands, my dream, and I can’t find it again. It’s all dark-”
“Casca,” Griffith whispered. He did not even know if she could hear him. Everything, everything he had done in this life, was to stop this very moment from happening, and none of it had mattered, because in that first life-
“How can I think of how happy I am?” Casca cried, “When my happiness is again in your hands, and how you… You… You didn’t even look at me. It meant nothing to you, what you did to me-”
I won’t do it this time . It was true, but he could not say that, because it sounded so pathetic. It didn’t mean nothing to me. Wasn’t that worse?
“Guts is downstairs,” Griffith said again, each word more painful than the last, “Just wait. Please. He’s going to call again. Just answer the phone.”
“You won’t even admit it,” Casca shrieked, “The years I spent in the dark, like an unending dream, helpless as a baby, while your dream was built all around you, and mine was gone-”
“I admit it,” Griffith burst out, his heart thundering in his chest. “And I’m sorry. Casca, you might not believe me, but I’m sorry. Every life where I’ve found you, it’s hurt me to see the things men have done to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I…” He gritted his teeth. “Does it help? To hear that I’m sorry?”
There was a long, terrible pause, and then Casca laughed again, even more sadly than before. “No,” she whispered, “It doesn’t help at all.”
The phone rang again. Griffith pictured Guts calling, again and again, increasingly more desperate. At what point would he give up and come up to be with Casca? Soon, it must be soon, his eyes fixated on her on the ledge, so far away, nothing he could do but watch, just like…
“You feel every lifetime, can’t you?” Griffith tried, again, so desperate that it caused him physical pain. “Every one. The three of us, you, me, and Guts, we live again and again, and I think this is happening so that I can fix it. Every time, I get closer and closer to fixing it.”
“My mother always said I had a guardian angel looking out for me, in this life,” Casca shuddered, eyes swollen and wet with tears, each word a stuttering, hysterical gasp, “But it doesn’t matter, this life. All my happiness, all my parents’ love, and I still felt a shadow over me, something dark, choking me. I used to have these horrible night terrors, and I didn’t know why. It doesn’t matter how happy I am, I’ll always be waiting for it to be taken from me. You’ll take it away from me, my dream. I’m so, so scared. I want Luca, I want Farnese, I want-”
“I don’t know why they weren’t reborn too,” Griffith pleaded. “I don’t know. As far back as I can remember, it’s just been me and Guts, and you. Casca-”
“So many lifetimes, so many of them horrible,” Casca gasped for breath, on the edge of hyperventilating, “Each one a weight. You, looming over me always. Where were you to save me when I was a woman all those years ago, bleeding out in childbirth? Why did you only show yourself to me in Casablanca? Why were you too late, in the last life - oh, god, I had a son, where is he-”
“I should have found you earlier,” Griffith was on the edge of hyperventilating himself. He noticed, belatedly, that his hand was clawing into his arm, carving deep, bloody gouges. “Before Casablanca. I didn’t know…” He knew he should not say it, but before he could stop himself, his traitorous mouth finished the thought for him. “I didn’t know that you were important, too.”
Griffith saw, in the long, horrible moment after the words spilled from his lips, how with those words he closed the loop of this life, and set forth the path of the next one. The light in Casca’s eyes dimmed, and she turned away from him, as though in slow motion, her expression fading, becoming subsumed in pure, all-consuming despair.
Casca said, face towards the sky, "I had dreams too, didn't I?"
You didn’t even look at me. It meant nothing to you, what you did to me .
Griffith had found Casca again. Through coincidence, or causality, or some great, unseen force, Casca had come to him again. In lives where she suffered, the memories came back like wolves nipping at her heels, and she died in any of the same terrible, unfeeling ways Guts and Griffith did. In this life, Griffith had done everything to make sure she felt no fear, felt no pain, felt no sadness, and in the end, that had not mattered.
It did not matter what Griffith did in any of these lives, because in that first life, he’d ripped her to shreds and left the pieces for someone else to manage, because he had not given her a single thought as he’d done it. The cycle of death and rebirth would not end unless all three of them, Casca included, willed it, and Casca could not will it, because of what Griffith had done. He could truly, genuinely do nothing to end this.
Casca fell from the ledge in such a way that it might well have been an accident.
Just as she did so, the door to the apartment burst open, and Guts screamed, “ Casca-!”
- Interlude
It was at this point that Griffith began to imagine that he'd misunderstood. In Falconia, he'd walked the long, echoing corridors, smiling blandly at all of the people he'd saved, and he'd brought back the spirits of the dead, and through all that, he felt nothing, and in the dead of night he'd put his hand on Princess Charlotte's arm, and he'd try to conjure up something to make his heart stir.
With the moon glinting above him, deep within his frozen heart, the thought sometimes came unbidden: what if my old friends were here to share my dream with me?
He had thought that was his goal here - in a world with no gods and no magic, he was to live a hundred lifetimes until he could find one to share with Guts, and then later also Casca.
Perhaps that was wrong.
Perhaps this was hell.
Perhaps he was doomed to strive for a dream this time with his dearests, only for it to be ripped from his hands again and again as punishment for the sins of his first lifetime. They were to hate him, lifetime after lifetime, and he would feel that hatred in his now-thawed heart.
If that was the case, though, why did Guts and Casca suffer too? If this was his hell, surely they would not - unless, of course, part of hell was forcing Griffith into the helplessness he'd created for them during the sacrifice. Watching them die in front of him, unable to stop it, just like-
Helplessness. There were times Griffith had not been in control of his own body, and he swore one day he’d be powerful, and he’d never feel that helplessness again. Hadn’t it been the same for Guts, if every lifetime, when he was a child, he’d been violated as he was? And Griffith had-
Guts had cut off his own arm to save Casca - to save Casca from Griffith.
Griffith really hadn't thought of Casca at all as he'd - and she remembered that.
Such beautiful dreams they'd spoken of together. Griffith was sure now how Casca had carried those tender moments close to her heart, how they guided her even when he was gone, in that awful cell, where - no, no, he could not think about it, no.
Dreams, memories of dreams, all gone. The warm, protective light around her heart replaced with thorns.
Do you think I'm cruel? He'd asked Guts that once. If he'd asked Casca, she would have said no, he wasn't, but that was when she still had a dream to cling onto.
What could Griffith do that was fundamentally the same as Guts hacking off his own arm? Of having his eye plucked out?
When he figured out what that was, would he actually be able to do it?
- The second to last lifetime.
Casca wakes up screaming from a nightmare one cold winter morning, the talons of it still hooked into her as the apartment comes back into focus - the bed too small for three (cozy, Griffith would call it), the dog curled up on the edge of it, the window facing outward into a busy street in Marseille.
Griffith is leaning over her, his face twisted with concern, and for an instant she is back in the nightmare, a monster with a hawk's beak looming over her, and she's brought to such hysterics that it takes a long, long time, and much coaxing from both Guts and the dog, for her to recover.
In the kitchen, Guts glares daggers at Griffith, unable as always to mask his emotions, and again as always Griffith's face is blank because he's always been preternaturally good at it. He stops glaring, though, when Griffith sets down a mug of warm, silky hot cocoa topped with two fat marshmallows alongside her typical black coffee.
"You just ran out of the room," Guts hisses over his shoulder, waving the spatula like a weapon and splattering crepe batter everywhere, "What's wrong with you, man?"
"I thought I'd scared her," Griffith says softly.
Casca takes his hand, eyes wide. "No, sweetheart, of course not. It was just," she shudders, "Such a horrible nightmare. I used to get them all the time when I was a kid. It's been so long, though."
Griffith kisses her hand and looks like he might cry.
The apartment feels emptier than it did when Casca gets home from work later that day, like tiny things have been taken, leaving a physical presence of their absence.
Guts is sitting on the bed, a note clutched in his hands, trying hard not to cry.
The note says: Soon, you'll start to remember. When that day comes, if you have any fond memories of these years with me, hold on to each other. Don't let this life slip away like the others.
"I don't fucking understand," Guts snaps. "How could he just leave ?"
At first, Casca doesn't understand either, but as little trickles of the past come through, eventually she does.
Both of them remembering around the same time, it’s not easy - everything that happened in the past is sharp as a knife between them, like if either of them moves, it’ll cause the knife-point to stab into the other. There’s violation after violation, which crashes over Casca like a wave, not just from Griffith, but from all manner of men and monsters.
There’s of course the violence from Guts, as well. In this lifetime, that’s what nearly sends Casca over the edge - but unlike the past, Guts and Casca have built a fortress with their grief, and Guts has hovered over her like an ever-watchful eagle, even as his eyes grow bright with horror and misery as he remembers, as well.
Casca steps onto the precipice not long after Griffith leaves. A part of her wants to die, then to live again, happy and safe in a kinder world than many she’d known before, and then when the memories return simply kill herself before they can fully crystalize. Even though this is not long after the point where Casca cannot be around Guts without fear, Guts eventually manages to dissuade her from it.
They both agree it’s right for her to spend some time in an institution - Guts, in the past, recognized his own shortcomings in caring for her, and he does so here as well. When Casca gets out, Guts says to her, “If you never want to see me again, I understand.”
Casca weeps. She weeps, and weeps, and weeps, because it reminds her of beloved days long past. There had even been a time when she would have trusted Griffith to say something like that, as well. She had expected him to give her agency, to give her choice, just like he did on that day when she was a child, and he saved her.
“I just need time,” she whispers, and Guts is bent over with grief, but he nods.
Years pass. Casca makes shallow friendships, the kinds that last only one lifetime. She remembers loving her mother and father in that lifetime in Berlin, but that it was nothing like the love she felt for Guts, and Griffith, and being with them in that little flat. At one point, out of some sense of self destruction perhaps, Casca finds the obituary her parents wrote for her. She can’t read German in this lifetime, and she almost laughs at all the hundreds of little differences that made her who she was. They loved her, her mother and father, and she feels the love in what they wrote about her in death. The midwife who held her hand as she lay weak from birth fever, praying over her so that she would be with her beloved child again even after her now inevitable death, there was love there too, wasn’t there?
At the end of this love lay an emptiness that nothing could fill. It always left, in the end.
Casca reconnects with Guts, and they almost immediately fall into bed together, and by the end of it, Guts is crying, as well.
They don’t get married, though that feels like the kind of thing that lovers in this world should do. Casca can recognize that her aversion to it is because, even as the years pass, and antidepressants make things that little bit easier, and she joins a rape survivors group therapy circle and they help her cope, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever stop needing a way out, a way to run from the people she trusts the most. She tries to convince Guts to join a survivors’ group as well, and at first it goes very poorly. Casca has to be the one to personally call one of the other group members to apologize that Guts called him a pussy in front of everyone else for crying, and the group member on the other end snaps, “If he really feels bad, he’ll apologize himself. If he’s not too much of a pussy, that is.”
Guts does apologize. He hates feeling powerless, and Casca understands. Before everything happened to her, she could have been a pillar of support for Guts, but now… Now, that would be like trying to stand on bloody stumps with the bones poking out at the ends.
Guts joins a yoga class, along with the man from the childhood abuse survivor’s group. Casca, cross-legged with a cup of coffee, enjoys watching him contort his bulky body into beautiful, complex poses, his muscles rippling and hands assured. She thinks of the Guts she knew in that first lifetime learning about something like yoga, or meditation, for his PTSD, and it’s so incongruous she has to laugh.
Casca gets a tubal ligation, and she nearly sobs in relief, sick with memories of miscarriage, of forced birth, of the agony of her body tearing from a child bigger than it could bear. It will not happen in this life, or ever again.
Griffith starts his own company. His crops are genetically engineered to grow with next to no water, and he refuses to patent the invention, giving away seeds and the technology to engineer them for free to places experiencing drought.
There don't appear to be any loopholes, nothing secretly vile, just a dream, for the good of the world. Casca watches him from so far below like a crowd cheering for a high up prince, feels agony as his face appears in newspapers and online while she sits, silent in her agony, waking up cold and afraid because she remembers what he did.
And what of Casca's dream?
It was important, too. She wanted to build a better world, and yet here she is, just like before, watching Griffith soar higher and ever higher.
She gets her masters in science journalism, and that is how she and Griffith meet again, nearly two decades after the memories returned and he left.
Griffith cannot quite mask his shock when he sees her again, and even, then, the faintest blossom of relief, of hope - which he quickly tucks away behind a bland smile.
"Casca," he says, softly. "What brings you here?"
Casca says, "I'm doing a piece on sexual harassment at your company, and I wanted to personally ask you for comment before it's published."
Griffith's eyes widen, and his expression darkens. "Who is it?"
Casca blinks, anger and despair familiar friends. "What do you mean?"
Griffith says, "I'd like to know who has been accused, so I can fire them."
Casca narrows her eyes. Her voice trembles with grief as she whispers, "Do you expect me to believe, for a single second, that you didn't know it was happening?"
Griffith says, "I suppose that's fair. I didn't, though, Casca. I really didn't."
Casca stands, suddenly, eyes wet. "I shouldn't have come here," she gasps, "I shouldn't have-"
Griffith takes her hand, gingerly, as though she's made of glass, and it just makes her want to cry all the harder, because there had been such a time, a time where this had been all she'd wanted, just a sweet, tender look from the man who had saved her, who had told her it was alright to have dreams, that together, they'd make those dreams real.
Love me , she'd always pleaded, the way I love you, with my whole heart .
"You have witnesses?" Griffith murmurs, his hold gentle, like he wants to show she could break out of it at any point, "You believe them?"
Casca nods, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
"If you tell me who the men are," Griffith continues, "They'll be gone before the morning."
Casca nods again, jerkily. "I'll tell you," she gasps out, "Once my article is published."
Griffith lets her go, smiling sadly. "Of course."
Casca sits down again, though she isn't sure what to say, or if she even has anything to say to Griffith.
Griffith says, hesitantly, "In Falconia, I had everything I thought I wanted. I couldn't understand why, even with my kingdom, I felt so hollow. All of my dreams, they'd all had you and Guts at my side. My sword. My Casca."
Casca closes her eyes, trembling all over. "So why, Griffith? Why did you…"
"Because," Griffith says, simple and unflinching, "I wanted to hurt Guts."
There is a very long silence. It's somehow worse in its honesty, and even with the tired resignation on Griffith's face, Casca's heart breaks hearing it.
"I always wished I mattered to you," Casca whispers.
"You do," Griffith says, "These deaths and rebirth won't stop unless you will it."
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Casca snaps, the bite in her voice startling, even to her. “It’s just like that time, isn’t it? You have everything, everything you said we’d have together, and I…”
“You were always precious to me,” Griffith’s voice is strange.
"You left me behind," Casca whispers, not bothering to mask her own sadness, flowing out of her like an overfilled cup, "While you flew higher and higher. You did that here, too, didn’t you? How can I believe you? A hundred bonfires, each one a dream, all snuffed out."
Griffith swallows, thickly. His voice is a plaintive offering as he says, “I can make you a member of the board of directors for my company, if you like. You have the credentials. They’ll listen to me-”
“I don’t want to be on your board of directors,” Casca snaps.
Griffith seems genuinely confused. “You don’t? Your dream, this isn’t quite it, but it’s not mine either, and in this world.”
“Griffith,” Casca closes her eyes, pleading. “Please stop.”
Griffith purses his lips, lapsing into a long, confused silence. After all this time, he still doesn’t quite understand, not in the way she wants him to - and maybe that means he never will. Maybe she just has to accept that.
Casca says, almost curiously, "You haven't asked me if I forgive you."
Griffith isn't quite quick enough to hide his shock. "I never expected you to. I never… I never forgave any of them."
"Them," Casca frowns, "Lord Gennon, you mean? The king? The jailer-"
" I don't want to hear their names!"
The violence of it is startling, and fear floods through Casca, her whole body curling up and away.
"Wait," Griffith says, quickly, reaching out again and hovering the heat of his hand over Casca's. His smile reminds her so much of a certain day long ago, by a stream, her head buried in his warm chest, "Wait. I didn't mean to."
There’s a long, painful pause.
“If there was something I could do to show you how precious you were to me… There must be something. Something I can do here,” Griffith says, voice flattened again, all emotion tucked away like a dirty rag.
“There’s nothing,” Casca’s voice breaks. “Really, truly, there’s nothing.”
“There must be,” Griffith insists, the faintest touch of something in his voice, “I - I need…”
I need to be in control of this. I cannot handle that this is something that I have no control over. Losing control as he had after his imprisonment, it had destroyed him, hadn’t it? Casca had seen that in bits and pieces, hidden corners she tried so hard to ignore as she bandaged his broken hands, until suddenly, he forced her to face it.
“If you can’t fix this, if this is entirely outside of your grasp,” Casca says hesitantly, afraid of the answer, wishing suddenly, very suddenly, that she were not alone here, with him, even though… He wouldn’t would he? But then, that time…
“Casca?”
Casca realizes she’s become frozen in place, staring off into the far distance, memories again at the edges of her minds staying her tongue, a milder version of how she’d retreated entirely inside herself in terror of what awaited her in the world outside. Suddenly, a growing crack in a dam bursting open, Casca is crying. Griffith’s fingers trace over hers, gentle as feathers.
“If you have no control over this,” Casca manages, the words coming out hiccuped and broken, like she’s a little girl weeping with a skinned knee, “If you can’t control if I’m better, will it stop mattering to you if I ever am?”
When Griffith stands, for a moment Casca is afraid. And then, his arms open, and then - in a ballroom, relief blossoming in her chest, because she’d been so sure he’d died, but here he was, beautiful and bright as ever, the way she’d melted into him, wishing it could be like that always, as it was in his arms.
“I think so,” Griffith says, his voice complicated. “I think…”
By the river, in that beautiful palace, awkward in a dress, and even like from a dream - rocks falling towards her, and then, just like when she was a child, the arms of someone warm and bright as an angel wrapping around her, protecting her - Casca remembers looking up as Elaine and thinking I know that face , and then she remembers her heart throbbing, and she remembers the overwhelming terror, her eyes filling with tears, and then the warm embrace was gone, and she was Elaine again, terrified and broken and tucking herself back deep, because remembering was too much - Griffith hugs her, and Casca lets him, and she wishes that any of those horrible things hadn’t happened.
It could have been simple, just like that warm life in Berlin. It could have been the three of them, living on dreams when there was no food or fuel for even a fire. There’s so much grief, Casca thinks, for the life that was taken from her.
For the first time, though, there’s a sense that this is something she can move forward from. There’s a life she can live with Guts, and perhaps even with Griffith, and her dreams are no longer like flowers crushed underfoot but budding shoots popping up from underneath melting snow.
The burden of being whole, the burden of needing Griffith to understand her pain has been removed. She will never be whole again, and that’s alright. This trauma will linger always like the chill of winter, and though it is a tragic fate, it is not a life-ending one. How freeing a thought that is.
Something clicks into place, just the faintest, softest bit of closure. For the first time in a long time, Casca feels a sense of peace.
- The End
"You know," Schierke said to Farnese, seated on a park bench in spring, verdant trees swaying like curtains in the wind, flowers pink and red and purple like little gemstones, "It's nice here. After spending so long trying to find them, I'm glad we have the chance to catch our breath."
Casca ran around in circles, vibrant with energy, shrieking with delight in this warm place in the interstice. She was a child, here, chubby and giggly, as was Guts, as was the floating, astral form of their son, his long black hair seeming to fade into shadowy tendrils and his eyes big and solemn as ever.
"I never knew Guts was so cute as a baby," Farnese cooed, near tears with warmth as Casca jumped on Guts' back, as did the moonlight boy, and they all fell to the ground laughing.
At the end, seeing Guts dying, Schierke had cast a spell, sending all their spirits into the roiling mass of the astral world. It had been dark, the same quality of the corridor of dreams, seeming to last lifetime after lifetime - Guts, Casca, and the Dark Hawk were nowhere to be found, as though vanished in thick fog.
Even the Moonlight Boy could not find them, and he reached his tiny hands out into the dark, making tiny, desperate sounds.
Then, quite suddenly, the fog had cleared. Schierke did not know why, but when she'd taken hold of the tender spirits of Guts and Casca, they'd all wound up here, in this quiet little place, with flowers and sunshine and laughter.
Casca let out a giggle and took off at full speed on her chubby child's legs in the direction of the tree line, waving at something in the distance.
"Casca!" Farnese cried, taking off after her.
Schierke panted, hitching up her dress to run, "Why am I getting a feeling of deja vu?"
Farnese managed to take hold of Casca's warm, tiny hand just before she made it to the tree line. Casca whined and began tugging at it, laughing the whole while at-
The Dark Hawk hid, shyly, behind the ragged bark of a pine tree. He was young, too, though older than Casca and Guts were - maybe six or seven? - and he blinked huge, blue eyes up at Schierke and Farnese.
"Casca," Farnese's tone was sharp, the flood of emotions from the corridor of dreams imprinted on her heart like a tattoo, "Stay away from him. He's dangerous."
Everyone froze. To her great surprise, the Dark Hawk started crying - as did Casca.
Guts, who had just made his way towards them, the Moonlight Boy's hand clutched in his, started to cry as well.
Farnese and Schierke exchanged alarmed looks.
"Of course," Schierke murmured, heart breaking, "They were all friends, once. If they're children, I suppose they wouldn't remember…"
The Dark Hawk, Griffith, met her gaze for just the briefest moment.
"Unless?" Schierke narrowed her eyes.
Griffith flushed. Casca and Guts both ran to him, and beside Schierke, Farnese sucked in an angry hiss of breath.
"I remember," Griffith mumbled, polite and formal, in that bird-like child's voice, "Not all of it now, but I know I'm gonna." His eyes turned pleading. "I really don't want to hurt them."
It was all just so sad.
"Gwiffie," Casca giggled, while the Moonlight Boy, much the same age as her in this interstice, hid behind her, batting his big baby eyes up at Griffith.
Beside them, feeling ignored, Guts started to cry again, and Farnese picked him up with a little giggle.
"Oh, you're so cute ," Farnese laughed, kissing his cheeks until he swatted her face away with one chubby hand. “You can’t really be Guts, right? Not this cute, sweet baby boy? Oh, I just want to eat you up!”
"Are you going to take us back?" Griffith sounded heartbroken. "Back to the scary world?"
"I think I figured out how," Schierke nodded, slowly. The Dark Hawk had power, emanating blinding light from his cornsilk hair to the tips of his fingers and toes, and yet here, in this child’s body, with his child’s mind, that world was still scary to him. He cowered in terror of it, much as he must have when he was a child then, younger even than her. Things that happened when he was young, that shaped him, that even now, after it all…
"No!" Griffith started crying in earnest, "I don't want to go back! It got better, and we were all happy, and I don't want to go back." He gripped Schierke's arm, tugging on her sleeve, big baby sobs shaking his whole body, "Can't we just stay here? Please?"
"I know he's the Dark Hawk," Farnese whispered to Schierke, "But I still… I can't be cruel to a child."
Griffith reached up, taking Guts' hand in his, crying ever harder, and he begged, "Please don't make me go back. I don't want to hurt them. Please, I really don't want to hurt them, and if we go back…"
"Everything goes back to how it was," Schierke sighed, finishing the thought for him. "And I don't know how much of this time in the astral realm they'll remember."
Griffith nodded, frantically. He started sniffling again, and for a moment, Schierke saw flashes of the lives they'd lived in this rip in time they'd created, the love, the pain, the hurt, the tentative healing…
Farnese knelt in front of Griffith, eyes troubled, glancing between him and Casca, still carrying Guts in her arms.
"They might not remember," she admitted, "and it might be how it was, with them scared and angry with you. I know," she took a deep breath, "what it's like to do horrible things to people because you're scared, and angry."
Griffith's lower lip trembled. He didn’t say anything.
Farnese smiled at Casca, her hand still in Griffith’s, and smiled at Guts in her arms. "There’s always a choice, isn’t there? And maybe, one day, in our world there can be a meadow like this, and maybe they’ll even want to hold your hand again. Before that, though, you need to choose them."
"I don’t want to leave," Griffith burst out, shaking with terror, "What if… What if I can’t do it?”
"Causality can bring you to the edge," Schierke mused, "But only you can choose to step over. It has to be the other way too, right?"
Farnese nodded. "It has to be."
Somewhere in this peaceful meadow interstice, where the sun was forever warm, and nothing could hurt, a bird chirped and twittered far in the distance.
"We can stay here just a little longer," Schierke tapped her chin, "It's been such a long time since you all got to just be kids, isn't it?"
"We get to go play?" Griffith gasped, wiping at his eyes.
"Just for a little while," Schierke warned.
"Yes," Griffith crowed, clenching his hand into little, gleeful fists. "I can’t remember the last time we all got to play!”
Schierke nodded, watching them all frolic about, holding hands - Guts and Casca’s faces were serene with blissful ignorance, as though those horrible, frightening days had never happened, in any lifetime.
At least, here, for now, they were all safe.