Private Tales The Past That Haunts Us

[Meredith]

It had been a long time, too long, that Meredith had been home. Even as she got closer to Vel Anir, her heart palpitated anxiously in her chest. The last time she had been here, she had been a wreck, the shell of her former self. She had abandoned Henk and Sable, fled from them, from the past. Lost in her thoughts, the horse beneath her stopped, snuffling the dirt of the trail she was on. She had decided to stay from the main road, she wanted to absorb her feelings, sit in them without being bothered.

She had remained in the duty of Dreadlord, stationed far from home. She didn't know if anyone knew she was even alive. She certainly hadn't heard a damn thing about her classmates. It had taken a while for her to take up that post, repeated attempt of her own life had prevented her from active duty for quite some time. Still, the continued to keep her on. She would bleed, they would heal. It had almost become an addiction, to see if she made it this time.

It took a long time for her to be okay, and now that she was, Meredith had amends to make. The forefront of her mind had been the look of anguish on Henk's face as he tried to help her. That was an image that never left her mind. She was here in search of him, to find closure and hopefully a new beginning. He was the only one that had understood her. She just didn't know where to even start looking for him. All she could do was head in the direction she last saw him. That graveyard of lost souls, where the ground had been slick with their blood.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk did well to avoid lingering on his regrets.

It had been one of his flaws for a long time, a weakness to be exploited by those who sought to use him and toss him aside. Some would tell you that the light mage still possessed too soft a heart for a Dreadlord, that he cared too much about the wellness of all people to ever properly carry his title. Perhaps they were correct. Henk, after all, did not argue with them.

He knew what they did not. That he had nothing left. His title, his mission, they were all that remained of him now. The family he'd once sought so desperately to hold together had fractured beyond repair, the members that comprised it lessening every week, it seemed. The harmony Henk had once hoped to achieve had been a colossal failure.

There was no salvaging the friends he'd held near and dear to his heart. They had moved on, either to other stations or other states of being. Those who lingered no longer looked at him in the way they once had.

Henk was alone.

The only thing he could do to bear it was to narrow his sights on the stretch of road ahead of him and ignore the smoldering wreckage on either side of it. That was harder to do on days like this when he had no enemy to fight nor target to seek. Just him and his mind, a war within his own head.

At least the day had been productive; having some off time had allowed Henk to repair his Katars and his armor, something they'd been in sore need of for months now. It also granted him the opportunity to wander the city, and take in some of the sights he hadn't been privileged to since before his cursed graduation.

It was during the trek home, his belongings slung over his shoulder in a heavy bag, that he realized where he was. Henk tended to avoid this stretch of woods, the trees still soaked in the invisible coat of sin that had choked them all that morning, the iron smell of blood still a phantom in the air.

He'd been so lost in his thoughts he'd failed to divert his path.

Meredith

 

[Meredith]

Meredith had slid from the mare that had carried her all the way here, stretching as her boots hit the dirt. She couldn't help the soreness in her back, but she still returned to the state of somber that these woods brought her to.

She crouched, touching the the soil and pine needles that covered the ground. Once upon a time, screams had echoed here. The smell of blood had tainted the air. Her friends had fallen in front of her eyes.

She stood with a sigh, grabbing the reins of her horse, opting to walk for a while. It didn't take long before she could see a figure in the distance, she wondered if they had any useful information for her. She hastened her step, her horse complying easily. "Excuse me" She waved a hand at the turned back, her voice seemingly to fall flat in the oppressive trees that surrounded them.

Henk

 

[Henk]

"Excuse me"

Even in his sorry state of mind, he knew a whisper of the forest from the call of an actual person. Henk looked up from the mossy ground beneath his feet, squinting his working eye to peer through the fog in search of the source. There shouldn't be anybody here... Hell, Henk shouldn't have even been here.

There was a figure ahead of him. No, two figures. The Dreadlord made out only the shape of a person and a horse through the misty air. If he hadn't heard their voice as clear as the day was bleak, he'd have dismissed it as a trick of his addled vision.

Instinctively, he felt his hand reach for the katar at his hip, gripping the handle of the weapon in case whomever called to him was a foe masquerading themselves in the dense and cloudy miasma surrounding them. He'd already been betrayed once in these woods. He would not be caught unawares again.

That iron grip released instantaneously as he saw the fiery head of hair that emerged before him. It was a face he'd not seen in some time, but one he'd thought about often. Their last encounter had been yet another moment he'd etched upon his heart as a failure, a burden to bear.

"Meredith?"

Henk gripped his bag and moved forward, trying to discern if the woods were indeed playing tricks on him.

"Is that you?"

Meredith

 

[Meredith]

The fog was thick, it seemed that nature had almost done it on purpose. Still, it fit the area for what it was. She had grown, in her time away from here. Her power, and her mind now both a fortress. While she felt the bitter sting of what had happened, it did not drive her to the desire of her own extinction anymore.

The silhouette in front of her had turned in the gloom to confront her, and she was not afraid of the protentional threat that it could bring her. Still, the face that materialized in front of her had made her stop in her tracks. He already fair features grew taut and paler still as if she had seen a ghost. In a sense the man before her was.

"Henk."

It was only one word, only a name, but the emotion behind it was palpable. She dropped the reins of her horse, tears springign to her eyes as she looked upon a man she hadn't even been certain had still been alive. She sprung forward to meet him, throwing her arms around him without a second thought.

"Henk"

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk hadn't seen or heard from Meredith since shortly after their cursed 'Graduation' ceremony. It had been in this very spot, mere weeks after he'd fled the visceral sight of his friends battered and bloodied and nearly bled to death himself in an old hut in the middle of nowhere.

At the time, she'd run from him. Henk hadn't blamed her once not in all of the days since, no matter how often he revisited that moment in his mind. Still, looking back, what he'd wanted more than anything back then was to feel comforted, to feel connection.

Now, even as his old friend threw her arms around him with enough force to make him step back, he felt only a small flicker of warmth. Henk's already scarred face twisted with conflicting emotions, a mixture of sadness and pain as he realized how stripped of his soul he must be, to feel so cold and hollow.

Even so, that little bit of warmth was something.

Henk wrapped his arms around Meredith, clutching her tightly to his chest as he clung to that spark, his eyes closing as he reveled in the only affection he'd been shown in months. No, that wasn't quite right... the only affection he'd allowed to be shown to him in months.

"I'm so glad... that you're okay."

Cracking open his good eye to take a quick look at her face as it pressed to his chest, he smiled.

"A bit unfair, though. Time has treated you much better than I, in terms of appearance."

Meredith

 

[Meredith]

She had regretted the way she had left things with Henk and with Sable before she vanished. She had been a complete mess, and it was a miracle she had even survived her own self-destruction . She had been young in many ways then, young and hurt, and sad. Seeing Henk now, she couldn't stop the smile, or the tears that followed.

"I'm so happy to see you. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't think of you." She clung to him tightly, her cheek pressed against his chest. It had been a long time for her too, since she had felt such affection. She tilted her chin up, not relinquishing her hug. She gently ran a finger over some of the scarring on his face. "I dunno, kinda makes you look mysterious and dangerous. The ladies eat that stuff up. My scars, they are in other places."

She finally let herself release him, though she took his hand in both of her smaller more delicate ones. "Do you have time to talk, we could go somewhere.." She gazed at their somber surroundings with a small frown on her lips. "Warmer?" She wanted to sit with him, learn what had happened since she ran from him, wanted to know how he was now, she truly had missed him, more than she had realized.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Even in the malaise of sorrow that Henk had been wading through for the last months, he could not help but smirk at Meredith's comment in regard to his scarring. It was true; Henk had once been quite self-conscious of his appearance, but now... the markings on his flesh seemed superficial compared to all else that troubled him.

"Thought... of me?" Surely not. Meredith had been his friend, but they'd not been especially close. Not like her and Sable. Raising his gloved hand, he places it gently on top of her head as he looks down at the young woman clinging to his chest. "I didn't think..." A flash of pain crossed his weathered face, not from hurt towards her words, but the realization that perhaps he had not been as forgotten as he'd felt. "Everybody is so far apart now, the people I cared about.

He'd assumed himself forgotten. More than that, he thought himself deserving of being forgotten.

When finally Meredith pulled away, she wasted no time in grasping him by the hands, preventing him from going far. Her touch was gentle, warm... the first warmth he'd felt that was not his own in some time. Selfishly, he wished it to linger. Opening to her would be painful, uncomfortable at first... but for a moment of company, a moment with another person, he would bear himself again.

"I do not live far. We can walk to my home from here in a matter of minutes, it's where I was headed anyways."

Meredith

 

[Meredith]

Meredith studied Henk carefully, her eyes tracing his somber features. It seemed like he didn't quite believe that she had thought of him, or that he was worthy of being thought of. She looked up at his as he put his hand on her head, giving him another warm smile. Her eyebrows creased, a small frown of her lips following at the sight of pain written across his features. He must have gone through a lot, and he must have been forced to suffer his burdens alone.

"I came back here to find you. To make things right between us, to explain what happened to me. I'm sorry Henk, you did not deserve this." Tears clung to her lashes before sliding down her pale cheeks. She hadn't meant to cause anyone else but herself pain, and this was the cost of that. Henk was always the one to go to, to rely on. He was so different from before, cold and lost. She hoped that spending this time with him would help, at least a little.

She nodded as he offered his home to her, and she finally relinquished his hand, taking the drooping reins of her horse once more. "Let's get out of here then and let the dead rest from our disturbance." It did indeed feel haunted here, and ever since she began on this path, it had felt like eyes stalked her every move, jealous of the fact she had not joined her classmates in death.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk's home was nothing to look twice at. Rather than a comfortable dwelling inside Vel Anir, it was little more than a cottage nestled a short ways outside the city, nestled against an old, crumbling stone wall from one of the many forgotten fortresses of Anir's youth, amid a patch of trees hiding it from the view of the road.

The place appeared old, but work had clearly been done to maintain it. The lumber siding of the home was fresh, untouched by nature's imperfections, and it appeared the roof had been replaced carefully by hand. When Henk was not furthering his task of quelling Gilram's movement, he was here, working on the little house he'd stumbled across after running from the forest during Graduation.

"This is where I came, after..." Henk explained, still not having come up with any reasonable response to Meredith's earlier words. He couldn't deny the sincerity behind them, no... but he also couldn't bring himself to agree with them either, that he didn't deserve this. "I hid in this house until my eye stopped bleeding, until my wounds closed. I wouldn't have survived otherwise."

After he'd returned, a quick check with the housing committee had confirmed it's abandoned status, and Henk paid only a paltry fee to take ownership himself. Leading her through the rather barren yard, consisting of little but dry grass and loose cobble from the dilaidated wall, Henk pulled the front door open, a warmth and scent of burning wax wafting from within.

"I figured it was only right I repay it with repairs."

Meredith