Dawn

Thank you flame-demon, I really appreciate your kind words. Since this is my first fan-fiction all feedback is more than welcome! I hope that you continue to enjoy my tale.

Now onto the good stuff


It was still early

The town at the base of Blood Pledge Castle hadn’t yet woken. No one stirred as Wolfram rode sedately down the street passing under the gaze of the sentries atop the castle gates. He rode through the gates of the castle and into the garrison. He led his horse to the stables and dismounted. After handing the reins of his horse over to one of the stable attendants Wolfram bounded up the stairs of the castle and quickly transversed the halls and corridors until he reached Greta’s room. He didn’t speak to any of the castle guards as he passed them. He could see how their gazes followed him, and knew that his silence was disturbing a few of them.

He looked at the door in front of him, his daughter’s door. It felt strange to think it, always before he’d thought of her as his and Yuri’s daughter or Yuri’s daughter. To know now that he was not just watching after her for Yuri’s sake but for-no, he wouldn’t think about that today. He took a deep breath and opened her door.

As he stepped inside he looked around seeing the familiar curtains and bed, Greta’s bedside tables and her armoire. He remembered sitting there on the bench at the end of the bed watching Yuri as he sat next to Greta on the bed as he had tried telling her stories from his home before ‘tucking’ her into bed. At first Wolfram had been confused and incredulous about such a ritual but later, later he had begun to enjoy it. Even going so far as to try and duplicate it when Yuri was back on Earth, until Greta had told him that it was okay and he didn’t have to try to be Yuri for her. She would wait until he got back.

Well, he supposed, since Yuri wasn’t going to be coming back he needed to learn how to be a father on his own. One that Greta didn’t need to feel slighted about. Wolfram had continued into the room as he thought. Walking closer to her bed until he was sitting on the bench at the end watching her small body rise and fall with her sleep. As though she felt his gaze on her Greta began to stir. She slowly opened her eyes and Wolfram could make out the dried tears on her cheeks and the puffy redness of her eyes as they focused on him. He briefly felt guilty that Greta had cried alone last night, but quickly shrugged that off.

They both had needed to grieve last night alone. The pain had been too fresh to share. As Greta’s eyes found him she sat up quickly and shouted, “Where were you? Where did you go? Yuri’s gone, they won’t tell me what’s going on or when he’s coming back and I-I-I.” Greta broke off as her voice cracked and she began to whimper and sob.

“Greta.” Wolfram stated. “Greta,” he continued as she quieted and looked up at him, “I’m not going to lie to you or pretend that I don’t understand or know what your questions are. Yuri is gone. He left our Great Demon Kingdom-he left us Greta, to go back to Earth. He won’t be coming back. He has given us all that he could and now he has gone.” Wolfram broke off to stare at Greta’s downcast face. He wasn’t sure how to continue; hell he hadn’t even been really sure of how to start.

“I never expected to have to be your only father; I know you’ve never been pleased that I took some of Yuri’s attention away from you. I can understand if you’d prefer to have either Conrart or Gwendel as your father instead. If that’s what you want I can to speak to them, I’m sure either will be proud to call you daughter. But I need to know, I need to hear from you Greta-what it is that you-“

“I don’t want to be left again!” Greta wailed at Wolfram. “Everybody’s always leaving me and I’m never good enough for them to stay, no matter what I do. I tried to be good. I tried to do what they wanted. I tried to kill Yuri and I couldn’t but then Yuri let me stay and called me ‘daughter’ and I tried for him too. Wolfram I tried, I tried, I did."

Greta broke into tears again as she launched herself at Wolfram. He almost missed catching her. He couldn’t remember her ever doing this to him before. She’d hugged Yuri, and she’d included him then but it had always seemed like an afterthought. Wolfram didn’t care right then. All he could hear was the pain behind the tears in Greta’s voice.

Suddenly it didn’t matter how he’d seen her before. It didn’t matter that if it had been him whom Greta had tried to kill first, he wouldn’t have adopted her. All that mattered was that suddenly he saw Greta not as an obligation that fell to him in Yuri’s absence, but as someone who had been left behind. He saw her now as someone that hadn’t been good enough to be taken along, someone not good enough to be first. He suddenly understood Greta in a way that hadn’t been possible before.

“Greta,” Wolfram whispered into her hair, “Greta, I know how it feels to be last in someone’s thoughts.” Her sobs had quieted and at his words her trembling had all but stopped. “I know how empty it feels inside and how much you want to scream for someone to look at you, to tell you that you’re not the last in their eyes. I know that I haven’t been that person for you.” Wolfram raised Greta’s face so that he could meet her face to face.

“I have been left behind too Greta. Yuri left me too.” Wolfram watched Greta’s face as she heard his voice. “I don’t think he’s coming back. But I know that even if he does I’m still not going to be first in his eyes.” He watched her eyes as she absorbed his words. “I don’t know how to be a father. I don’t even know how to be a brother. I don’t know what you’ll need or how to act. But I swear this to you Greta, I will never lie to you and I will never look beyond you to someone else. We may stay here at the castle or we may go back to my estates, but if you choose to come with me we will be a family. Somehow we will be a family. But first we will be a team. Together.”

Wolfram took another breath to steady himself this was new. He was putting himself in a place where he had never been before. He was giving Greta options for her future and he wasn’t trying to nag or wheedle her for her decision. He wasn’t trying to make the option he wanted stand apart from another. He had been honest and straightforward.

He thought back and wished briefly that someone had given him a choice when he was Greta’s age. A choice to know of Conrart’s mortality instead of ignorance, a choice to be part of the armies instead of left behind in the war, a choice to have lived apart like Gwendel and Conrart had as children or to stay tied to his mother, a chance to have had the choice to grow to a man instead of being babied and coddled by his family without-Wolfram broke off.

He supposed that that was something he didn’t need to think about right now, if ever. Maybe this was like one of those verses Yuri was always blathering about something about beggars and horses and-he couldn’t remember what else. He felt his mind start to wander a little and was brought back by Greta’s voice.

“You swear.” The voice was small, it started out reedy and ended stronger with her little hands fisting in the blue material of his jacket sleeves. He looked down at her again and saw her nose running and her eyes swimming again with tears. She looked alive, as though inside her was strand of lightning waiting for the merest change to escape. He could feel the tension in her body as her voice came again.

“You promise, no more lies, no more leaving without me, no more leaving me behind when something else-when something else comes.” Greta stopped. She didn’t know why it was so important for her to keep speaking. She knew Wolfram. He was always around he had always been around whenever Yuri was. Even when Yuri had gone back to his Earth, Wolfram had tried to pretend that he was still coming around for her, until she had told him to stop she reminded herself. He really had only been there for Yuri’s sake, not hers’.

She knew that everyone here considered her a little girl. And she knew that it was because that was how Yuri had always seen her. She knew that Yuri had accepted her as his daughter because he saw her as a small child, and yes there were times since she’d been here that she felt as though she really were as small as everyone told her she was.

But she also knew that most of the time she acted small because that was what she knew Yuri expected. Most of the time she felt old, as old as Yuri or Gwendel or even as old as the stones of Blood Pledge Castle. Greta knew she wanted a home, before she had had to pretend to be a devoted assassin to have a home and she then she had had to pretend to be small in order to be someone’s beloved little girl.

She knew that Yuri had loved her in his own way. But since he had always seen her as so little he had never really taken the time to talk to her. Oh yes he’d played the games he thought she would want to play and he had told stories to her that he thought she would like to hear, but she didn’t think he really knew her. “Can you love someone you don’t know?” she asked herself.

Greta looked at Wolfram as she relaxed her grip on his jacket. “If you swear, that from now one you’ll talk to me, not at me and that we’ll be partners. I’d like to stay with you Wolfram. You knew Yuri. I’d like to stay with you.”

Greta’s words washed over Wolfram’s skin. He’d hoped that she would choose him over Conrart or Gwendel but he hadn’t thought she would. The idea that she saw enough in him to want to stay when everyone else seemed to only want to leave-it meant more to Wolfram than he’d imagined it would. He impulsively gave Greta a tight hug. At first she seemed shocked and then she almost seemed to melt in his arms as her little arms wrapped themselves around his back. Wolfram thought he heard her breath catch like she was going to start crying again.

“Greta,” Wolfram began, “Greta, I need to leave to clean up. But I’ll meet you for breakfast downstairs. After that I think we should sit in my mother’s garden and talk. We need to decide where to go from here.”

“I-I understand Wolfram.” Greta whispered. She watched as he rose and turned to leave the room, when he got to her door he turned around.

“Greta, I’m glad that you choose to stay with me. I’m glad because-because you knew Yuri too.”

Wolfram’s voice was quiet as he turned again and left her room. She could hear his boots on the stone floor of the hallway as they walked away from her room. It sounded like he was walking towards the main bathing chamber. It was strange she thought that he was going there and not the other direction towards the Maou’s chambers.

“But I guess not too strange,” Greta continued in her mind, “There’s no more Maou anymore.” With that thought Greta turned back to her pillow to bury her face again into its’ comfort. “Just a few more minutes,” she thought, “just a few more minutes and then I’ll go downstairs and pretend to be too little to understand what’s happened.”