[Fic] [Round 16] - Love, Love Only - PG
Author: Clorinda
Characters: Conrad, Gwendal, Wolfram
Word Count: 328
Rating: PG
Warnings: Incest
Theme: Freestyle
Love, Love Only
By Clorinda
Conrart and Gwendal have never been close; there's always been too much in between.
The rain's supposed to wash away your sins, but what happens if you've committed so many that they cake you like mud? Gwendal doesn't have any answers, just stands there in the gateway to Blood Pledge Castle like a dead man, lifelessly, listlessly watching the downpour that's so bleak that it feels like someone up there's taunting him by making Nature obscure even joy.
Supplication isn't something that suits Conrart, not when he's on his knees, a broken man, but the rain is for him, to hide his tears and no one will ever know. She used to cry for him; somewhere down inside she could never forget the soldier who loved her like she loved Adalbert, and she used to cry for him, for the handsome steadfast soldier she could never see.
Was he the only one? Was Gwendal all alone because it seemed (laughable, yeah, sure, farce that it was) everyone was in love with Julia, and he was the only one left out because he loved too, but just the wrong one.
The Lion of Luttenberg.
Lord Weller.
The half-human cuckoo in the royal nest.
His brother. Only his brother.
And he hates Celi with the last drop of blood he has left for ever looking twice at his father. There's nowhere he would rather be than far, far away from Conrart God-damn-you Weller.
Because he knows Wolfram von Bielefeld, stallion of the royal nest, shudders at the sorrel's touch because it's something he knows he can't have anymore. Wolfram has pride, but broken hearts sting even more. Conrart has one master, and he's heartless- he gave that away a long time ago.
Gwendal's forgotten now, what it's like to love, to feel love. And truth and integrity, those are forgotten things too. It's strange, he reckons, that they're all aching, but there was never anything between them to start with. There's no wound, but they're still bleeding.
Hope and memory- those are cruel things.
-- finis --