Work Text:
The tingling alert of wards disturbed made Amadeus look up from the reports he was perusing.
Catherine walked in through the entrance, meeting his gaze with a singularly miserable expression. All other thoughts fled him as he analysed the situation.
It was well past midnight, only a few hours since the last conversation they had. The campfire gathering of her legion would have started to wrap up and that was not something she would miss. What could have happened while she was with them?
He filled up a spare cup with the wine he always kept at his desk and handed it to her. She held it with both hands and sat on his bed, knees folded to her chest. She had never been a deft hand at hiding her emotions, but it was rare to see her intentionally unguarded.
He sought no explanations. Her questions about Hye were sufficient for him to piece together what had brought her here. That redheaded mage of hers.
Scribe’s reports had mentioned a fracture between them, one that must have come to a head today. Kilian of Mashamba’s troubles with sorcery were well-known and her inquiries into how to resolve them could not easily be hidden. He had wondered how his apprentice would eventually handle it—she despised human sacrifice but she cared deeply for her paramour, and her time in the Legions had made her accept more than she once would have.
It seemed she had not given an inch in the end. Perhaps that was for the best. Practically, she should have conceded; he did not vaunt human sacrifice but death-row inmates were a small price to pay to enhance one in her inner circle. Yet a single moment of compromise would not have solved the underlying issues.
Amadeus had not expected that relationship to last when he encouraged Catherine to pursue it—only that it would do her good for however long she held onto it, and when that ceased, it would make for a valuable lesson instead.
These were the demands that came with the power and responsibility his apprentice had taken on, and few were those who could stand beside her in them.
There would ever be more of these realisations to come. Even now, sixty years gone by, there were times Amadeus had to confront realities that he would rather not exist; the only thing time had brought him was the ability to accept, calculate and follow through decisively.
“Does it get easier? Carving away pieces?” Catherine asked.
From the resigned exhaustion on her face, she knew the answer. She was still asking because it was not the truth she wanted or needed.
“Yes,” he answered simply, ever the splendid liar, and watched her shoulders relax.
There was nothing more to be said and it was not distraction she sought, so he sat there with her, work abandoned, in that silence.
It did not take long before her eyes started to fall shut and her head drooped until her chin rested between her knees. The long-since empty cup was held precariously between her thumb and forefinger.
In the state she was now, she looked every bit her youth and it felt improbable to consider passing to her in a year or two the Name of Black Knight. Let alone that of the next Dread Empress, the one who would fully unite Callow and Praes after Malicia.
… But that was sentiment. She would learn. She thought she wouldn't be sufficient, but for all that he had paved her path, the victories were well and truly hers at the end of the day. She would realise, in his absence, that she had always been equal to those challenges.
He reached out and plucked the cup from her hand, leaving it on the bedside table. She was already well on her way to sleep; there was no reason to stir her from it. The dark omens of tomorrow were best met with good rest.
As for him, there should be a bedroll around. That would be adequate.
Lightly placing his hands on her shoulders, he nudged Catherine into lying down. While she settled into a comfortable position, he picked up the blanket and unfolded it. He was pulling it over her shoulders when her eyelashes fluttered and he paused, watching her unfocused gaze settle on him.
For a heartbeat, devoid of the considerations and circumstances that bound them both, those dark eyes reflected trust and love and a truth that crossed over the thin line of pretense they kept themselves to even now.
Then she went back to sleep.
His hands hovered needlessly above her for several more seconds before he pulled away.
There were things he had left unaddressed with her and that she had not yet realised herself. There was a story of a duke killed by his daughter, built on a pre-existing pattern of patricide. There was the inheritance of the fae that bound one to the groove they had fallen into.
It would not have been an issue, he supposed, if the first thought he had on hearing that story hadn’t been of himself. Didn't that say it all?
Now the weight of it pressed down on him, more than the story he had been watching out for, of an apprentice succeeding their mentor in blood.
Not yet, he reminded himself. There were ways to slip the tide of narratives and he intended to see each through, to give himself time to prepare thoroughly.
Even so, the end whenever it arrived was no longer uncertain. It was yet another reality that he knew to accept.
Any way it went, theirs was never the side for kind stories.
He settled back in his chair and continued working. The detailed plans to deal with every nation and threat had to be put down in ink, to survive him. Assassin had returned and would have to be prepared. The contingencies for Catherine’s safety were the first thing he ensured would be in place but once everything else was done, another check would not be amiss.
When the time came for her to succeed him, Catherine would do better, be better.
He needed nothing more.
But oh, how he hoped to live and see for himself–