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This room was always far too bright for her. The blinding sunlight bounced off of the clean white surfaces of her walls and furniture, illuminating every corner. It often made her feel like she was the only smudge of colour left in the world, dotted against the snowy space around her. The thin, plain white chemise she had been dressed in seemed out of place to her most days. Though matching her surroundings, it was too clean and simple for how she felt in her own skin now. There was nothing clean or simple anymore.
Not this perfect place.
Not even the sunlight itself.
The daylight served as only a reminder now that yet another day had passed. The lavish room would bleed from black to blue grey, before breaking into the brightness of the morning sunrise. Eventually the process would reverse and the room would descend back into darkness again. At the beginning, she felt at least in the darkness the room would melt away, and she could imagine an escape in the void. There wasn’t one, of course. She had checked. No doors. No other exits beside the balcony, and her chain would not allow her to reach further than the windows of the great double doors guarding it. It was like a birdcage.
The days felt endless. Cycling over and over without an end in sight, but at least it gave her something to do. Count the number of days she had been held here in this place. This white, godly hell.
That, and his visits.
Nearly two months, she figured, had passed since she had first awakened in this place. Or maybe it had been more. The woman had not been in the clearest mind to count at the beginning of her captivity.
His visits were frequent, though not daily. At times, he could vanish for days and Casca would wonder if he’d forgotten that she was here. During those days, her new linens and meals appeared mysteriously, seemingly brought by an unseen attendant. Sometimes Griffith’s appearances were brief, stopping by only to watch over her or spare a few quiet words to her. Nonetheless, she would hide her gaze from his. Occasionally, he would personally bring her books or some other form of distraction before his fleeting exit off of the balcony. She stopped wondering how he could jump from so high. Nothing made sense anymore, anyway.
Over time, the visits became… different.
The first time had been maybe a few weeks after her arrival. He’d appeared wrapped in a halo of white as usual, from gleaming armor to his snowy hair. Casca had tried to pull back from him, panic clawing at her mind as he approached her. The heavy shackle around her ankle had kept her from being able to avoid him for very long, though. He hadn’t said anything, at first. Only silently watched her, as he’d lifted a palm to her breast where the pain of that strange, infernal mark throbbed and bled.
Until it suddenly ceased.
With one touch it had been quieted. Sitting now silent, ever carved into her flesh.
She didn’t know what he had done.
With the pain subsided, a wave of lightheadedness had rolled over her and she teetered in place. She’d been lifted back to the bed then by his deceivingly strong arms, where she dizzily stared into space. Dazed from the rush of adrenaline and panic still coursing through her, the corners of her vision had started to bleed to black. She felt on the edge of fainting, consciousness slipping through her desperate fingers.
‘Griffi-’
His hand was gently on her cheek and through her swimming vision she could see his lips move to form words she could not hear. He’d smiled softly then, and soon those lips were pressed to her damp forehead. They were cold.
She had wondered if they had always been that way.
Casca had never gotten to kiss, or be kissed by Griffith before everything changed.
By the time her senses began to return to her, she could hear the metal of his armor clinking as he removed it piece by piece, placing it somewhere off to the side. He had stood there soon after stark naked before her, but she hadn’t wanted to look. She could not look at the man who looked so much like the old Griffith she once knew. Her hero.
He wasn’t that Griffith, of course.
There was something different about him now.
Despite his gentle demeanor, or loving touches, something was wrong. Griffith caressed her cheek once more as he had come to sit before her on the bed.
He would violate her again that day, just as he had as a demon during the eclipse, here in this spotless room.
It was so confusing to Casca; her limbs had felt like sandbags. Too heavy to lift, let alone push him from her. Watching him atop her with her head turned to the side to obscure her tears, from her peripheral she saw the way his long hair enveloped them as he leaned over her. He looked so much like the man she had once dreamt of in years passed. The gallant leader she had fantasized spending her life with. Those blue eyes half-lidded and lips parted just slightly, stomach muscles flexing while his hips moved against hers.
But, no matter the likeness, this was not the man she remembered. It had to be something else. Something that had been built out of the body and dreams of the man she once knew.
More sickening and infuriating to realize though, was that she could have looked straight at him then, had she wanted to. She could not even look in Guts’ general direction without a wave of horrid nightmares swallowing her whole. Every face of a lost comrade, every monster looming around them, every intrusion into her broken body. It would all wrap around her like a vortex of thorns so tightly her throat would shut itself off from her lungs and her heart would pound in her ears. It was all there.
All that pain.
All that horror.
All that death.
Casca had felt that toward Griffith too, not long beforehand. It had been even worse with him, reliving the horrible sights and feelings as raw as if it were still happening. Sucked back into the cyclone of her horrible nightmares. However, seemingly as soon as her brand had ceased its bleeding and throbbing, all of it had gone quiet. Completely silent. The images stopped flooding in, the screams in her mind stopped deafening her. It was only numb now.
She felt nothing of the panic from before.
What had he done to her with that touch?
It was a cruel irony.
Guts was the man who’d saved her countless times from her perils and he was lost within this mass of blackness and death that to her encompassed every horrible moment of that solar eclipse. That sunless afternoon that robbed away the lives of all of their friends.
And the man who had caused it all in the first place could stand there before her, as if it were his right to have her eyes meet his.
He’d always taken what he wanted as if it were his right, though. Back in their youth that had been inspiring. Nothing could hold down his ambition. He could promise to catch the stars and could have actually done it. He was her motivator, her mentor, her reason. He was her magic.
But this was not that same Griffith anymore.
His eyes might have no longer been red like they had been that horrid day when he had taken her as some sort of winged hawk-like demon, but that same cold fascination floated behind those slitted pupils all the same. Gone were the eyes of blue sky so bright and warm she could have drifted away into their glowing summer landscapes. Replaced by icy blue shards of glass or gemstones, they bore through anything they gazed at. Nothing met the power of his eyes now with any hope of surviving it unscathed. They would swallow the words on your tongue, silence the thoughts in your mind before you could even open your mouth. When he spoke, she could feel the world go still for him. As if not to interrupt him. He was on a wholly new level of untouchable to her. He was intangible now, unreachable like a spirit or the wind. Untamable and cold.
She had heard his breathing hitch after a while, and his body shuddered within hers. Heat filled her while his thrusts slowed against her, panting softly as he spent himself. Her tears rolled freely over her cheeks when he stopped his movements above her, stilling within her as he breathed slowly through his nose. Eventually, those hollow blue eyes opened wide again and he regarded her for a moment long enough to lean in and kiss her gently once more, and before she knew it he was gone. He had dressed so easily and quickly it was disorienting. Before she could process it he was at the balcony again with that same soft smile on his lips.
“I will be back in the morning.” He’d stated in a voice so familiar yet so soft she had almost missed it.
It was cold, though.
Just as cold as his eyes.
That had been the first time he had come to this room to take her in that way, and it would not be the last. As the two months rolled onward, he would do the same many more times.
Each time it happened she would remember the fire she used to have in her blood. Each time she would remember the fervor she would fight with, driving her to stop any man from taking advantage of her. Any man but him, she supposed. She could recall the feeling of steel in her hands, the way her muscles would twist and pull to free herself time and time again. Ready to slice and chop her way to freedom. She wondered now where that fight had gone. Would he always be untouchable to her?
The strength to struggle was lost to her, the screams silenced by the numbness in her brand and the coldness of those eyes. It was paralyzing.
For every visit that he’d come to lay with her, the further her grasp on who she was before slipped away. Or maybe it was that the person she was long ago was becoming more self aware again. Casca was not sure. Perhaps that foolish, hopeful woman that blindly wanted to be by his side was taking over for her, thinking and coping where she could not. That girl who would have sacrificed every last piece of herself to give him the stars. Anything he wanted.
Griffith was always worth enduring anything life could throw at her.
It used to be them against the world. She remembered.
The angry part of her that longed to resist and the terrified part that feared what he’d become got quieter and quieter with each visit from him and it left her more despondent than ever. Where was her fire?
The part of her that wanted to fight like a wild animal for survival had tucked its tail and accepted its fate somewhere deep in the back of her mind.
It hurt to think that she could give up.
All of that fire had burnt out. Smoldering in its place was resignation, a deeply desperate resignation. It hurt less to pretend this was okay. It was self-deluding. It was madness, if she thought about it long enough. Pathetic.
The only bright moments she’d had since coming here– the only relief she had felt, was during the two full moons that had passed her by. Those were the nights she could forget what she was letting herself become.
Those were the nights that boy would come to her instead. Her son.
How strange to think… She was a mother.
She had a son with Guts.
With a mind to herself she was finally able to make that connection. It left her a little breathless.
Yet even that was tainted by the truth of what Griffith had done to them.
Casca was not sure how it had come to be, or how it could even be possible, but that sliver of a memory from Elfhelm remained with her. Somehow, Griffith and her son shared the same being. It was a truth she told herself she’d imagined, but deep down, there it lay waiting for her to look its way.
She couldn’t.
The woman did her best to put it from her mind when she held her son, the boy without a name. When she stroked his hair, or looked into his face, which to her looked so much like Guts. She would curl around him protectively, holding onto that anchor that brought her the smallest piece of the other man she loved. The love she felt was matched only by the pain that love brought her. But she wouldn’t waste these moments.
When it was just them, the new Griffith was far from her mind. Pushed back to the darkest recesses of her consciousness.
The mother and son would interlock their fingers together, she would read them pages from the books she’d been brought, pull herself to the end of her chain to look out into the night sky to count stars with him. Anything, anything at all that could make this feel normal. Like a mother and her son, like a family safe in a home. It almost worked.
By morning the child was gone, replaced by the man who’d taken her chance at normal motherhood. Griffith would stare at her then, something glimmering and unreadable behind those shards of ice. The first morning he had simply sat with her until the sun had fully risen, brightening the room once more and making him gleam like snow. The second time had been much more disorienting. That time he had embraced her when she awoke, pulling her into his arms. That morning had ended with more of their confusing lovemaking. It wasn’t right… But it could feel like the old Griffith when she closed her eyes.
This man only wore the face of Griffith, and despite her knowing better, she still wanted him to be the man she had known more than anything.
It was becoming easier to pretend that he was.
As the days passed her by, he’d become more talkative with her– at least compared to their earlier visits. Sometimes after he’d lie with her, he would speak quietly about his day ahead or the day that had passed before. Meetings he would have to go to, people he would have to meet with. She’d learned the names of some of his followers. Followers whom he called ‘The Band of the Hawk’. It hurt to hear that name at first, but eventually she was able to convince herself that nothing had changed. She could not leave this place to confront reality and if she tried hard enough she could picture her friends out there somewhere, still fighting for this man’s kingdom.
The two new members he’d spoken more of were Sonia and Mule. Two youths, from what she’d gathered. He spoke quietly of their antics together, and she found a small smile tug at the corner of her lips thinking that such carefree and childish moments still exist in this cruel world. Then there was Charlotte, who she had been surprised to learn was here. Not only that, but betrothed to the man laying at her side. Though, Casca did not spend too much thought on that. Griffith would do as he wanted, he always had. And while infidelity was not something she could have pictured the old Griffith partaking in, this Griffith was still someone she was learning about.
He felt like a new person, with all of their shared memories.
So different, yet so much the same.
It was hard to tell if any of his old feelings were actually there. His voice was sweet and gentle now, his touches lovingly soft, and sometimes the smile on his lips would briefly reach those reptilian eyes. He was almost human. Almost Griffith.
It was strange and painful how easily he could reference the old Band of the Hawk, like they were still his companions. As if they were still around somewhere out there and he’d just talked to them the other day. It made pretending easier when he did that, though. She could laugh about something foolish she’d remembered Corkus saying and he would nod with a small smile of remembrance. She hated this, but they were slotting back into the places he and she had always held. She smiled.
Him her swordmaster and she the sword in his hands.
They were effortless together.
She hated it.
Just as she hated him…
Even still, her love for the man he was before persisted.
Soon, more weeks had gone by with little fanfare or notice. Until she, for the first time since arriving here, found something unexpected in her room upon waking. Folded at the end of her bed lay what looked like outerwear, neatly set aside for her in place of her usual clean gown.
The chemises she had grown used to wearing had become something of a constant for her. Simple white cotton gowns that gave her little to hide behind. Seeing a set of stockings folded alongside a royal blue linen tunic and dark leather girdle took her aback. There were even boots to wear despite the lack of anywhere to wear them to. How long had it been since she had worn anything different?
She thumbed over the blue tunic, an embroidered white hawk on the upper left breast catching under her fingertips. Her eyes glazed over looking at it, getting lost in the weight of the cotton linen as memories washed over her senses with the sight of that emblem.
“Charlotte embroidered that for you.” A voice soft like a wintry breeze, and at this point so familiar, spoke from behind her on the balcony where he’d enter.
Casca turned to face him with the clothing in hand, meeting his serene blue gaze. Shards of ice still, but the unease they had initially brought her was dying with time. This was just Griffith now.
“She did?” She asked, eyebrows raised. She had not even known that the Princess knew of her presence here. She wondered for a moment what else she knew.
“Indeed.”
His response was simple, singular and sufficient. It was just how he spoke. No words wasted on padding.
Casca eyed the garments inquisitively, not asking with her voice but gesturing to them out of curiosity.
“Put them on.” His eyes held hers, a small yet soft smile on his lips. Real or not, it didn’t matter anymore. “I would like to show you something today, Casca.”
Of everything he said and did not say, her name was the most startling to hear. It sounded the most like the old Griffith, the man from her past. The one who would put his hand on her shoulder and guide her through her roughest waters. She swallowed those memories.
That man was dead now.
She mourned.
Watching her with distant eyes now was what had been born of that man’s corpse, his gaze not averting as she turned to lay the clothing out to change into. She lifted the chemise she was wearing over her head, not bothering to hide her nakedness from him. At this point, there was nothing he had not seen of her. It was becoming familiar.
She pulled on the tunic, enjoying the softness of its weight on her skin, the hawk rested on her breast just over where the brand sat, still dormant like a sleeping beast. When it came to the stockings she faltered. There was still a shackle around her right ankle, an accessory that had begun to feel like a part of her. She could hardly feel the weight of it anymore. The only reminder being the tinkling of metal on stone floors.
“Ah, um–”
Before she could fully inquire him how to remedy the situation, he was kneeling beside her with an iron key in hand. Wordlessly, the symbol of her imprisonment clanked to the floor without protest. It was hard to believe that in somewhere near three months, this was the first time she could register the feeling of her body unencumbered by that chain.
Blue eyes flickered up to her as he stood to his full height once more, now looming beside her like a feather adorned spector. She swallowed.
“Thank you, Griffith.”
He only nodded to her, stepping back to his spot near the balcony door.
Once dressed, and oddly without restraints, she was led to the balcony's edge. The railing was thick and tiered, matching the architecture she had memorized in her own room. It was the first time in months seeing outside of the white room. An expansive city gleamed below, stretching to the horizon. The sky out here was the most beautiful sight, though. Wide and blue, with white clouds streaking like paint across it in wide brushstrokes. It was breathtaking.
It reminded her of how his eyes used to look.
Bright and endless, they were full of hope and dreams.
The tears nearly reached her eyes again and she blinked away the feeling.
A loud flap in the wind drew her attention and she gasped at the beast of dark fur, claws and a horn that hovered near the edge of the balcony now.
Zodd, she recalled.
“Come.” Griffith called to her, and she’d taken his outstretched hand. He helped her onto the creature's back, steading her with his other hand on her shoulder.
“Casca, hold on tightly.”
This was the first of their outings together. Each time, maybe once a week, Griffith would come to her room and collect her. They would ride Zodd down from the incredible height of her balcony, and he would take her on small tours of his kingdom. Falconia, he called it.
Each time he would end the journey back at her room and inquire the same question.
“Do you still dream the same dream?”
He wanted to know if she would still follow him to the ends of the earth if he had asked. Each time she answered honestly, unable to lie before those new eyes.
“I don’t know what my dream is anymore.”
He would leave it at that, not pressing any further on the matter, but still the ritual remained the same. Every time it became harder to deny him.
One time, after their journey through the gardens and a brief run in with Lady Charlotte, they had returned to the white room to lie with each other once more. It had become like breathing to her now.
She hardly had to think about giving into to him.
Casca wasn’t sure when the struggle in her mind had finally given up completely, but it had died so quietly she hadn’t a thought to mourn it. It was so much easier to not think, not to fight. To simply pretend this was the Griffith she had always loved moving within her. She’d let herself stare into his eyes, pet his hair, accept his kisses. Lean into his touches the way she longed to so long ago.
It was dizzying to think of, when she pictured these moments that way.
When he had finished that afternoon, rolling off of her and laying himself down gently at her side to drape an arm over her waist, she had finally let go of a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. This felt right, didn’t it?. It felt good. It had to. If she just held onto that, she could push away all of the uncomfortable truths that lied at the edges of her vision, right?
As long as she had these moments.
These little points in time that felt like a future she could have had once upon a time.
She had her Griffith in those moments, if she closed her eyes. Just him. And on the full moon, her son would be with her. It was broken, but it was beautiful if she tried to make it that way in her mind. She could finally be Griffith’s woman. And for once a month, she could be a mother.
Once a month.
Her… a mother.
She felt dizzy again.
Her hand went to press over her stomach only to bump into Griffith’s as he moved his hand to rest there. His palm was larger than hers, holding securely to that place where she had once briefly carried life within her. Her abdomen tightened.
A thought occurred to her.
When had she last bled?
A sudden start nudged her from her relative peace. She had been here for some time now. Only two of those months had she bled her monthly cycle, or was she mistaken? Suddenly her confidence in her day tallying faltered. Surely she hadn’t miscounted by much. A rush like the curling of a great ocean wave rocked through her, and she felt like she would be sick. How had she not realized? Her cycle had always put her through such discomfort, somehow she had missed that the days rolling by had been without it. She had missed one month’s cycle and was nearing when it should have begun this month as well if she was remembering correctly. Her eyes snapped open and she turned to meet his, meeting the all knowing blue shards of glass that were already studying her face. Griffith nodded.
He knew.
Breathing seemed a chore all of a sudden, and her hand shakily went to fold over his hand on her stomach. Hers was cold and clammy, now trembling, where his felt like stone draped in silk.
Those icy blue eyes held hers, then. Finally, he asked her the typical question from their outings he had yet to posit this afternoon.
“Do you still dream the same dream, Casca?” His gaze bored into her. “ Will you follow me?”
She felt like she had swallowed seawater, and the rolling tide inside her had her feeling dizzy and disoriented.
Pregnant?
With Griffith’s child….?
Was this something he wanted?
Would this be the final push to keep her at his side forever? Had this been his plan all along? What was his plan for her? Why did he actually want her here?
Her thoughts were ricocheting from question to question, all the while his eyes studied her face. His own features were gentle, a smile lifting the corners of his lips. He looked pleased.
Something reaching from somewhere in the back of her mind was screaming at her to wake up from the dream and run. See the monster in front of her as that reptilien, winged demon she had met him as. The snake that coiled around her neck. But, she couldn’t hear that part of herself anymore. No, not over the roar of emotions that lapped at whatever remaining sanity she had left. It was too much, too big of a feeling to hold in what remained of the fragile shell of her subconscious. It shattered.
The pieces now felt too fragmented to pull back together.
This was her Griffith, after all. It had to be. He loved her back. Finally returning all those years of feelings she had poured into every act of devotion she had given to him. Every bit of her strength that she had used for him, every drop of blood she had spilled for him. This was for him, all for him. She would have followed him to the very end of everything.
Of course.
She would always be devotedly, his.
“Yes,” she breathed, speaking without thinking anymore. “I will follow you, Griffith.”
Somewhere behind the swirl of violent oceans in her mind, a desperate part of her saw the way those slitted pupils widened unnaturally. Saw the curve of his lips not as a gentle smile but a restrained predatory victory. The hawk encircling its prey had descended, and she was firmly in his talons now.
But none of those thoughts would be able to surface over the black waters for Casca anymore, her dark eyes were full of only him now. Only him and the thought that this was the future she wanted to give to him. To give herself, her body, her blood, her soul… to him.
Whatever had existed of the Casca from before had now well and truly drowned in the black sea of her mind.
The next hour or so that passed felt like an eternity as she stared into those endlessly blue eyes, now convinced that they were the very same ones she had always known and loved. She could no longer see the differences between the past and present. Could no longer feel the monster slithering around in his skin. This was simply Griffith. In all his glowing, regal glory. Sitting atop the world as he had always dreamed. And now, she finally had caught up to stand beside him.
He was hers, and it was all she could see.
It was perfect.
The sharp trilling of a hawk got both of their attention, finally breaking the silence they had been sharing. Sitting on the railing now sat the bird of prey, staring in at them with almost human-like focus. Casca recognized this hawk. It was Sonia’s pet, a creature she often liked to use to alert Griffith to her messages from afar. She knew Sonia was likely speaking silently to him from far off in the palace as she sat there, and she waited for him to finish.
It didn’t matter what that message could be, her curiosity had been quelled by the contentment of madness.
He stiffened at her side for a fraction of a second, but she missed the way his pupils narrowed to needles as he sat up and parted from her. She couldn’t see the way his lips betrayed a small upward curve, as he kept his back to her at the edge of the bed. She couldn’t perceive the way his muscles tensed in anticipation. She could not see the way this raptor readied itself for flight.
Griffith stood at the side of the bed, silently redressing himself into that illustrious armor she could not help but now love.
“Griffith, what it is? Do you have to go now?” her hand instinctively went to her stomach, as if the thought was more out of concern for the new life there needing their father nearby.
The Hawk of Darkness turned to face her then, eyes flickering to her hand on her belly and he let a small but loving smile methodically cross his lips. Catching her eyes with his once more, he nodded.
“It would seem… Guts has finally arrived.”
Just as suddenly as he had said it, he was gone. A flap of the curtains and a gust of wind covered the sound of her desperate gasp. The sound that left her lungs in a pained rush came out so quickly it startled her, raw and inhuman. It hurt her throat.
All at once she felt herself toppling from that grand height she had climbed to blindly over the past months in this room. A part of her heart that had been shattered and buried kicked back to life, filling her airways and choking off the oxygen.
Guts… was here?
Her eyes widened.
…No.
—