Chapter Text
Today, finally, Raven would be visiting Brave Vesperia.
It had been about two months since he’d talked to the group, about as long as they let him go without sending him a letter insisting he visit or otherwise threatening to barge into his apartment if he didn’t, but today that wasn’t necessary. No, today was a good day, where he could walk and talk and feel just fine. The best he’d felt in months, in all honesty. Maybe that was why he could truly appreciate today.
With a deep, deep breath, Raven filled his lungs with the crisp, fall air and stepped carefully down his apartment stairs, making sure to hold onto the railing so he didn’t fall. First, he decided, he would buy them some fruit, just as a little present, and he made his way to a vendor he knew well.
“G’mornin’, ma’am,” he said as he approached the stall, having never found the time to ask the lady her name but knowing her face quite well. Considering her close proximity to his apartment, he stopped by from time to time when he’d promised the kids a batch of crepes or some other sort of demand of a sweet, yummy desert Raven couldn’t weasel himself out of making, and when he’d visited Brave Vesperia more frequently a few years back, she’d sometimes even have his orders ready for him. He hadn’t done that for some time, however, and he knew he couldn’t make crepes today. “Just a dozen or so apples, if you could, darlin’.”
No more than that, because he knew he’d have to carry the fruit the rest of the way down the street.
She smiled sweetly at him, but in a strained sort of way. “Of course, sir,” she said, putting in his requested amount, and then a few more, and they’d argued over this enough times for him to know he lose any fight against her generosity. She tied the bag up and carefully handed it over, making sure to hold the bottom of the bag for him until she knew he could hold it well. “Here ya go, Raven! They’re on the house today.”
He sighed heavily, his arms already starting to strain from the weight. “Darlin’, now that’s just a bit much, dont’cha-”
“I want to,” she said firmly, still looking at him with growing concern. “They’re my apples, after all; can’t I set the price how I want to?”
He really didn’t want to fight her on this, he thought, but this was the second time in a row, not including all the times she’d won in the past. “...At this rate, you’re gonna go outta business, and then which lovely girl will I buy my fruit from?” he asked, flashing a quick smile in an attempt at his former energy. He knew he knew he fell short.
Hell, she knew it too, if the increased strain in her smile was any indication. “Nothin’ for you to worry about, that’s for sure,” she said, attempting a joke with a chirpy point. “ I think if you think I’d go out of business because of a few free apples then that just means I gotta work to change your mind! Or,” she said a bit softer, “if you wish, you could just repay me by tellin’ me how you’re doing. Findin' sleep has been a bit easier, I hope?”
Yep, he’d lost this battle thoroughly. “...Yeah,” he finally said lamely, too tired to argue about it further. “I’m doin’ okay. Just takin’ it one day at a time, ya know?”
“Yes…I know.” And that she did; that had been his response every time he’d seen her for the past two months. They both knew why, but there wasn’t anything either of them could do about it.
Still, there was politeness and there was kindness. He smiled and waved at her as he turned away. “Well, thanks again, ma’am.”
“O-oh, yeah…you too!” she said, watching him turn away and trying to smile despite her evident worry. “Goodbye, Raven!”
Suddenly, it struck him how he didn’t know her name and today might be the last day he’d get to learn it. “By the way,” he said, turning back to her, “Miss…”
“Marie,” she replied, folding her hands half anxious but all kind above her lap in a way that reminded him of Estelle.
“Miss Marie,” he repeated, nodding to himself. He’d remember that. He threw another wave over his shoulder, along with a couple of last words. “Thank you for everythin’, Miss Marie.”
The heart was a curious thing.
It was weak, it was the easiest thing to hurt, it would falter time after time, and it was never as strong as one needed it to be. It, quite frankly, could make life a living hell, and he didn’t just say that because his ached him on a daily basis. No, even for a normal person, the heart was the center of all pain. And yet, it always kept going.
With every moment of weakness, there was a moment of strength, and with every moment of pain and hurt there was a moment of love and comfort. Sometimes it took a long time to receive, but people got there eventually, usually, if they worked for it and opened themselves it.
It just kept going, if you let it.
Until, finally, it didn’t.
Raven knew his death would come sooner rather than later; he’d hoped for it for most of his life, in fact. Ever since that day he’d woken up with that damn rock in his chest and Alexei had given him a different name, he’d wished for it, and he’d nearly received it many, many times.
Then, of course, the kids came by and ruined everything, with their smiles and hope and thoughts of family and welcoming. He loved them and he lived for them, and he quieted that small voice that always wished for it until it was silent and it didn’t have any further hold on him. He’d set such thoughts out of his mind, and for years he’d lived and he’d been happy.
Yeah…death could have been easy before then…but now, finally, he had to fight to accept it.
Finally, after twentyish years of keepin’ him goin’, his heart was giving out on him.
In truth, he wanted to see them as well. Two months had been much too long, he decided belatedly; how many more times could he have seen them if he hadn’t been so afraid of how they’d react? Their shock and fear and worrying might have been worth it, if only to possibly see them again. Call him selfish if you would, but their smiles always eased his soul and these days he was weary. He could use a bit of ease. But, in the end, he still thought he made the right decision. He didn’t think they’d smile much if they saw him now.
He’d started to realize his situation a couple of years ago, back when he’d still traveled with Brave Vesperia on the regular. Back then he’d still traveled between Dahngrest and Zaphias with them, always going according to the whims of the people who thought it necessary to ask him about what's-this and somesuch, taking advantage of his expertise and the knowledge of his own guilt making it impossible for him to say no.
Some days he needed a break, though, and that had been one such instance when he’d stormed aboard the Fiertia’s deck, exhausted from the day’s work and just…exhausted overall. He hadn’t been able to sleep well lately, and he’d been fighting off what he thought was perhaps the blooming start of a sickness, if his daily weakness had anything to say about it, but nothing he wanted to think about at that time. He’d had enough of thinking for the rest of the week, so when Judith and Yuri asked him if he wanted to blow off some steam by helping them with a small monster elimination south of Aurnion, he was quick to say yes.
Only…of course things didn’t go as planned.
That’s just how things went sometimes, Raven knew. Wasn’t so easy to accept when he found himself trying to turn in battle and found himself teetering towards the ground with a beast inches from snapping around his knee, however.
Next thing, pain indescribable radiated heat up and down his leg and teeth flashed red, tearing into his flesh and gnashing towards his face.
He didn’t hear his friends crying out his name in panic, or his own cry of pain, or even register his own faint gasping as his blood fluttered in his veins. No, for the smear of way too many seconds, it was just black and red flashing, speckled with white and searing the inside of his brain with the images of that monster tearing into him and his own dark blood dripping off of the chunks of flesh torn from his leg.
Later, he would get the scolding of a lifetime at how he just laid there while the monster ate into him, and how he shouldn’t have been fighting if he hadn’t been feeling well, but there wasn’t much he could say about that. He hadn’t expected it either…but he couldn’t exactly tell them that. So, Raven just shrugged, doing his little verbal Raven dance and letting himself heal as they demanded because, well, old people needed their rest! So what if he demanded they bring him stuff every five minutes, they didn’t mind!
…Karol really didn’t seem to mind at the time, actually, but he didn’t let himself think about it too much.
Especially not when Rita came in, guns blazing, with Estelle on her heels and they did a full healing and check over. Seemed like having his knee halfway torn off did something for makin’ people get all concerned about him. After Rita demanded his shirt off and they exchanged a few arguments, with Estelle nervously looking at them from the corner, Raven relented to the blastia check and…she didn’t seem happy.
“Technically, it’s fine, but…” She trailed off, troubled.
“But…?” he weakly prompted, the blood loss (surely it was just the blood loss) making him dizzy on his bed.
“There’s a…dip here. And here too. And…ugh!It looks like you’ve been overworking yourself for the past several months, actually,” Rita said, her voice quickly dipping into a frustrated growl as she swiped through the blastia screen until she closed it with a groan and a punch of a finger. “What the hell, old man? Does Flynn have you running circles or something?! If it’s too much, just tell him and he’ll find someone else!”
“Uh…well…” Raven blinked palely from his lounge in the bed, the throbbing in his knee only adding to his spinny, spinny, tossy turney head feeling. “I didn’t…think it was that bad…? Y’know, just been doin’ the same old, same old…”
“Yeah, well, that’s obviously not working for you,” Rita grumbled, crossing her arms and gentling from a soft reprimand from Estelle. She’d been trying to work on her ‘bedside manners’ when dealing with him, according to the letters he’d gotten from Estelle, and it seemed she was making genuine progress. How sweet. And then she huffed and jabbed another finger at him. “Fix your life already, idiot! Take a rest or something! Jeez! With as much as you sleep, we shouldn’t be seeing stuff like this on your blastia!”
His eyebrows shot up into his bangs, then fell back down as he realized something and he smirked. “Aw, yer really worried about me, ain’tcha?”
“Shut up!”
Not long after that, however, he did, in fact, ask for a reduction in his responsibilities.
He quit completely, actually. For both Flynn and Harry.
He just…wasn’t able to take it anymore.
“So, you’re really set on this, Raven?”
From where he sat behind his grandfather’s old desk, Harry looked up at him, now a couple of feet taller and several years more experienced, with the same face paint as old Whitehorse decorating his face. It had done Raven’s heart proud to see how the young man had grown over the years. Even moreso to know that Harry hadn’t needed him for a good while now.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Raven said heavily, his usual smile hard to find at this moment. As much as he’d lived most of his time with Altosk in a state of utter flippancy for what the next day would bring him, aside from orders he’d gotten from either the Don or Alexei, he couldn’t deny that Altosk was the closest thing he’d had to a home until the kids came along. They had a lot of history, but facts were facts. “I think it's about time I start slowin’ down. Your grandpa wasn’t exactly the easiest on these ol’ bones, as ya know. Knocked me around a bit, had me runnin’ around doin’ his errands, all sorts of things,” he joked in his usual complaining whine.
Harry chuckled, but then looked at him a bit more sincerely. “...Alright. If that’s what you want. Just know that you’ll always have a place with Altosk. If you need some work, we’ve got it, and if ya need some help, we’ll be more than happy to step up. And don’t get too crazy when you start living the retired life, alright? I’ve heard the stories.”
“All that don’t capture nearly all the magnificent facts of the facts, I bet,” Raven said with a grin.
Of course, it hadn’t escaped either of them how the years had weighed Raven down since the conversion so many years ago. No, in all honesty, the bone-deep weariness had always been there; it was just that the new lines on Raven’s face emphasized it now more than ever. Raven had held out as best as he could, but at long last even his guilt towards both the Empire and the Union couldn’t keep him working anymore.
…Truthfully, both Harry and Flynn accepted his resignations easily. Perhaps they hadn’t actually needed his services for a long, long time. Perhaps they had merely kept him around for other reasons…
But done was done, and finished was finished, and now it was time for him to figure out what to do next with his life.
Only…hm.
He soon discovered he wouldn’t be able to live in the spare room Brave Vesperia had long set aside from him.
Despite having lived there for the past many years, Raven began to notice a slow change. Noises seemed louder, the guild house seemed smaller, and the hustle and bustle of guild business just within earreach stole whatever relaxation he may have gotten from no longer working.
….Yeah, sure. That was okay. He could have lived with that.
But more and more frequently, he found himself breathless and leaning against the nearest piece of furniture, having to take a second before he resumed whatever task he was busying himself with. When he walked down the hallway, he bumped into the small table they’d set a vase of flowers Estelle had sent them last, much to his own subdued cursing and frantic efforts to make sure it didn’t fall. When he stepped up from stair to stair, it took him twice as long and with a far greater need to hold the railings lest he fall backwards, and more than once someone had found him ruminating on his next step with an eyebrow of surprise at seeing him just…standing there in space. His attempts at a hobby were stilted, at best, and his recipes for dinner became shorter and less elaborate, though the fast paced lives the guild now lived hardly gave worry to all these little disturbances.
They simply gave him a little smile, offered a hand of help, and then kept moving on, never impatient just like the stream nudges along the pebble resting on the bottom.
He knew, however, for their sake and his, that he needed to move.
Thus move out, he did, and soon he discovered what else his failing body had in store for him.
Some days were short.
Some days were long.
They all were peaceful as time trickled by and he came and went from his children's lives and then went on to find the happiness he’d wanted for them even before they had taken him in.
And yet he knew it couldn't last.
He felt it, day by day. The peace he'd craved for so long, the right to lay down his blades and rest his arms, had been hard won after years of grinding at the behest of his masters through the years lasted for now, but would soon fade. A new fight was beginning, and it started from within. It had been creeping closer. And he started to get afraid.
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
Raven stared at the drops of crimson falling from his fingertips, sighing heavily as the gash in his palm continued to seep. Despite his best efforts for the past few minutes, ones that left him more and more exhausted with every attempt to summon his healing magic to the tips of his fingers in a manner that had been natural to the point of barely requiring conscious thought…nothing came. No green-blue light. No ease of pain. No slight tingle as a scar knit his flesh back together once more, ready for him to resume whatever battle he had next.
Nope. That was it. Magic, gone.
Whatever vigor or energy he used to use in order to touch the magic of the world was now drained from him, and now he couldn’t even heal himself. Oh, the many turns his life has taken…
In the many, many months after he’d moved into his new apartment he’d found it to be…genuinely lovely. It had been great. The stairs, he’d known, would be a problem, but he’d convinced himself that the forced exercise would be better for his body than if he’d lived on the first floor. Plus, it had afforded him some more privacy.
That’s what he’d told himself when he’d first moved in, but with each passing day it was starting to get harder and harder. His nights, he was finding, stretched on long and cold, no matter how many blankets he’d piled on top of him, and he had no appetite. Even now, today, he’d been trying to force himself to eat something when the shakiness in his hands slipped the knife from his fingers as he’d been trying to slice an apple and he’d cut open the belly of his hand.
And now he couldn’t even…
From where he’d slumped over the sink, his shoulders hunched and heavy, Raven tried to breathe in deep and calm the sudden welling of emotions surging in his throat. He was…he was fine. He was okay.
Right? Right?
But…there was something undeniably lost if he couldn’t even harness his magic any further.
His ability to fight? Sure, whatever. He hadn’t wanted to wield a blade for many, many years, so when he found that he’d been unable to practice his bowblade drills any further because his body had grown too weak?
….Well, it stung, but by that point he’d taught Karol everything he’d known; Raven wouldn’t have been the last practitioner of the forms Casey had developed and yet one more aspect of her legacy would have moved on. He’d always expected his physical deterioration, and even far before this moment he’d been wrestling with years of his body betraying him to pain and simply no longer being able to move as he once did because of his blastia.
But…his magic. There wasn’t any reason he could think of that wouldn’t allow him to continue to feel and manipulate mana and aer. Why couldn’t he…couldn’t he…
The careful inhale he’d been tedious to ensure filled his lungs smoothly now exhaled shakily as the facts truly, truly dawned on him.
Something, undeniably, was eating away at his energy with every passing day. He’d convinced himself that he’d be fine, that he’d be able to simply live with whatever this was that was affecting him like he always did, but now he’s…
No. Whatever. He’d just have to accept it.
If this was truly, truly happening, if he was truly dying , then that meant he had things to prepare. Documents to put in order. Matters to put at rest. Business to attend to.
And he didn’t. Have. Much. Time.
That only made the slow, creaking shake of his limbs along the edge of the counter all the more irritating, his legs threatening to spill him to the floor with one misstep and using up more precious time . But he’d do it.
First, he thought as he reached his fingertips up to the cupboard and pried it open with his fumbling, numb digits (as they lost feeling when he lifted his arms above his head), I need to make my will.
Second, he thought as he reached for the small stack of white gauze resting on the second shelf, accidentally knocking it to the floor and rendering him incapable of standing back up for far too long when he’d bent over to retrieve it, I need to talk to Casey one last time.
A trip to Zaphias for a visit to the war monument would take all he had in his current state, he knew, but he wouldn’t be able to rest easily until he did.
Then, third and lastly, he decided, standing once more and dressing his wound with the slow wind of bandages, he needed to say goodbye. One last time.