So @anghraine posted this meme just as I was sitting on my ass waffling about starting to write anything for that timeline I wrote up and I figured, what the heck, as good an excuse as any. Man, this took willpower and editing and it still sucks and I’m trying to cram in too much information, but whatever.

Original story fic bits, in seven parts. (as this is some of the montage sequence of angst)

loosely inspired by A Death in the Family. No actual Batman knowledge required. 😉

…

“Give me back my brother, you knave!”

…

Gages is a dangerous city for an Imperial spy.  In direct opposition to both Emperor and Primarch, the ruling lord of Gages shelters the followers of the Pure Ones sect, not out of any devotion to that branch of heresy but because while the Pure Ones reject the authority of both secular and ecclesiastical crowns just as they reject the non-spiritual world itself as hopelessly tainted, this refusal to pay homage or taxation does not extend to the Lord of Gages, as the leaders of the Pure Ones remember whose swords and pikes block the valley from Imperial troops.  Elsewhere the Emperor wages what has now been years of intermittent civil war to stamp out the heretics, aided by agents under the secret direction of Lord Rupercht, yet not here at this city in the mountain pass.  As long as the Lord of Gages reaps his tax on the heretics to support his more mercenary motivated rebellion, the Pure Ones have free rein in the city – which means anyone who falls under the suspicion of holding either Imperial sympathies or those supernatural talents the Pure Ones blame on the forest-taint will face the worst of mob cruelty.  Ashar, adopted son of Lord Rupercht, green eyes pre-cognitively reading the twitches and half-startled movements of the frightened woman in this small alley as he pulls the stamped badge of the Imperial bureaucracy from its hidden pocket to try to convince her that he can safely extract her from this cesspit of a city, is both.  Eyes that can read any opponent’s movements in a fight before it is made, a talent that gives the edge needed for a starving boy with too-daring thievery and too-aggressive street brawling to survive until the most fortunate mistake, fail him.  Ashar reads the flash of almost-regret on the blond woman’s face before the blow that bruises the back of his skull and knocks him cold, but he has always been defined by the irony of his too-trusting heart.

Rupercht had argued with Ashar before the boy left for Grenfort in the mountains above Gages, and he knows some of the blame must fall on his shoulders for persisting in thinking of Ashar as a boy, as the skinny thirteen-year-old thief he plucked from the streets of Lutet instead of the nearly eighteen-year-old man his adopted son has grown into.  Rupercht fought with his first squire until Richard was knighted too, the young man chaffing under Rupercht’s rules and caution, and afterwards, which is why Richard is spying alone in the holy capital, currently unreachable – but Richard is safe.  Ashar could not stand the reports of witch-hunts unchecked, had gone off without support and entered the city gates of Gages, been captured.  Rupercht analyzes the report, re-reads the mocking letter from the Lord of Gages, places the badge back on his desk and flips the piece of pewter back and forth, refrains from digging a gouge into the wood with the metal.  In his mind he writes several letters, the first to his cousin Cataline warning of the aid he may require, the second to Richard to call him home, and the third a most distasteful plea.  Rupercht trained his squires as agents of the Imperial Throne, to fight as Rupercht has trained himself, to hunt for treason and ferret out enemies, sneak through the night for evidence and break into the places lawbreakers wished hidden, dangerous work, necessary work, and Rupercht hates himself for allowing his wards to join his crusade.  

As a child Rupercht lost his parents to the Pure Ones, and he will not lose a son.

.   

Mother grabs Ansa’s hand with painful force, pressing thumb against the bones of her palm and squeezing as if she plans to snap the small bones in Ansa’s hand, but it is not calculated, for Mother does not mean to hurt her, Ansa knows, and that is why Ansa calls her ‘Mother’ instead of ‘Aunt Alis’.  She can read the tension in the older woman’s face and around her bright green eyes, the pallor and the stink of dried sweat and fear that sunk into everyone’s flesh when news from Gages reached the manor, and Ansa knows if she speaks up, Mother will soften how she clenches on Ansa’s hand to drag her and her little sister Alienor to the private chapel.  Mother momentarily releases her grip to shove open the chapel doors, glaring at the altar and the suspended votive charms that hang in front of the altar mirror.  Three faces reflect from the mirror and nine charms made of amber beads spelled to shine brighter than the candles and woven in flower-like shapes with thread twisted with a piece of each family member’s hair: one for Ansa, for Ansa’s mother, the one in the center for the man she calls father, another for her little sister Alienor, the newest one for her little brother Tierry who was born a year and half ago, Father’s cousin Cataline with bright red thread so it looks like a pomegranate flower, Elred who raised Father after his parents died in the Summer Riot and counts as family even if he is only a servant, just as the last two are for Ansa’s other brothers Richard and Ashar, neither of whom share blood with Mother or Father but were adopted into the family just as Ansa herself was.  A charm would hang for Ansa’s first mother if they had a piece of her hair to weave through the amber beads that give off that unnatural electric glow and a blessing placed so it would be would known if she still lived, for Aunt Alis worries over her long-separated elder sister, the woman who gave birth to Ansa, that woman Alis has not seen since she was Alienor’s age and whom Ansa ran away from at an even younger age.  If Ansa’s first mother dies there would be no suddenly dulled amber beads to slip untouched from holy knots, no way to tell until rumor or dispatch reached the family, if they are lucky.  “Pray for your brother,” Mother hisses as she kneels before the altar, pulling Ansa and Alienor to kneel beside her, her eyes locked in a death-match with the beaded charm that hangs above the candles, the one twisted with a lock of Ashar’s hair, the only one twirling above the flames and flashing golden sparks of light as it spins while the other eight hang still and bright.

.  

The Emperor learns of Rupercht’s request for the ransom amount for Ashar and summons the lord to the private palace wing in Lutet.  Both men know how the Emperor depends on Lord Rupercht to hold his throne, the tenuous balance of power between them, how the Emperor is afraid of Rupercht’s loyalty, and how he needs Rupercht’s support both monetary and political, especially now that the Emperor’s forces have weakened after settling a territorial dispute against Roul the Wolf.  He brushes aside Rupercht’s earnest statements of meeting any price, of emptying his family’s deep coffers, and brings up oaths of fealty when Rupercht begins to speak of leading armed men towards Gages.

“One of the imperial agents, a man operating under your authority, has been imprisoned by the Lord of Gages, and if you do nothing in retaliation you shall irrevocably diminish all imperial authority, invite full rebellion from all the elector lords,” Rupercht argues, all masks discarded, his desperation naked.

“An agent where he should not have been, one spy among many.”  The emperor’s tone is bland.  “You have a son now,” he says, speaking of Tierry, “a true heir, so it’s not as if you need” – and this is where Rupercht almost commits treason, storms out of the imperial study and punches the wall before he is tempted to hit flesh.

. 

“I have asked, but no one has offered to pay for your ransom,” says the Lord of Gages in false sympathy, laughing and leaning back as Ashar tries to spit on him – not that his mouth has spittle for the gesture. “No use for an incompetent spy, or just a disobedient one?”

Ashar tries to ignore the words as lies, but they worm inside, ache worse than the cracked ribs and broken legs, the ankle that hangs twisted, the fingers crushed after the last escape attempt, as satisfying as it had been to sink fist and teeth into the guards.

When Ashar first woke, after the alley, inside a dungeon stripped and chained, the lord of Gages had laughed over his prize. Ashar hates the sound of that laughter more than any pain.

He thinks of how dry his throat is, how next time he will bite his cheek or tongue until his draws blood, so that there is something to aim.

Next time.

 . 

Alis is praying before the altar, her knees resting on a folded blanket to save them from the stone, but she has touched neither the pillow nor the plate with some olives and a piece of cheese that Elred has placed nearby.  Ashar’s charm spins like a weather-vane, the only illumination in the chapel, for she has moved the other family charms to another altar, and some of the beads have fallen from knots that should not have come undone.  Alis has not had the courage or will to pick the pieces of amber up from where they have fallen and does not dwell on what they signify.  The first months she recited prayers; now she mutters challenges with lips drawn and snarling to those remaining pieces of amber, waiting for the last sparks of electricity to gutter out, the last loops to slip loose, with stubborn hope convincing herself that if she doesn’t take her eyes off those beads they can’t escape.  Until the charm falls, becomes a pile of discarded amber and hair on the altar cloth, inert and cold and dark, her son lives.  Rupercht has never joined his wife or daughters in the chapel to pray until now, but when Alis turns her head in the middle of this long vigil, she watches her husband kneel and then fold down onto the stone floor next to her, arms curled around his head and hands in bright red and white fists as his forehead rests against the cold stone.  Tears fall the short distance from eyes wrenched shut as he finally allows his body to weep.

.

There are rumors from Lutet that Lord Rupercht has gathered something of a small army, with red-haired Cataline, elector prince of Lutet, at his side.  The Lord of Gages knows his own forces are larger, his allies within the holy capital will aide him, and that the Emperor cannot allow this to blossom into a full war and lose the man that keeps a crown on his head.  In the dungeons there is no acknowledgement of this rumor, except for how the Lord of Gages, no longer smiling, unsheathes his dress sword and stares at the body hanging limply from the ceiling.  With a sneer he plunges the sword into the boy’s stomach and yanks, watches how the bright red blood gushes out, splashing on his face, and once the torrent ebbs, he hacks at the wrists below the cuffs until the body crumples in an untidy pile on the squalid floor.  “Toss this out with the rest of the trash,” he says to a guard, “and send a message to Lord Lion when he comes begging for the bones that I refuse.”

Alis watches the charm fall, soft and silent and strangely peaceful.

Outside the wall of Gages, a man stands in wordless impotent rage as his eldest child takes to the sky screaming.

…

*

_{knave was not the actual insult}