First Class Ambush

[No Face]

"I wanted to catch you..." Aurelia said early one morning before Gerold would take his eventual leave. "Before you left."

It was early morning. The break of dawn barely making it through the smoggy haze of London. Aurelia was there on the front porch of the Knightsbridge house, wrapped in her heavy sleeping robe, with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand.


It was a first class ambush.

Seth wasn't around to warn him. Well played, Dumitru.

Gerold hadn't quite jumped out of his skin, but the jolt that went through him wasn't nothing, either. Coat and hat donned, umbrella strapped to the top of a small leather bag, he zeroed in on Aurelia with a whip of his head, and just managed not to slip off the porch. He cleared his throat, but was by that time already taking a step toward her, rather than away. "I knew... that you and the Flynns... had been in need of less mayhem, not more, just now."


"Our break has not yet started." Aurelia said, watching him with a soft and sad smile. "We have time for a little more."

She took in a quick breath, looking out at the morning air before back to Gerold.

"May we talk before you go? I feel as though so much has happened and... I haven't seen much of you."


He stared at her. Aurelia was always a vision, and always being a vision did not rob it of its power through familiarity. Gerold had long found it comforting instead of off-putting or personally alluring. It was not that he was insensate; it was instead that Aurelia was as much, these days, the heart of an aura of warmth and groundedness that he respected as of physical loveliness. He did not know, had never learned, if that was a trait of every Eforie who had lived before the Dark had come for them, but he was glad it was a trait of this one. It demanded the kind of honesty from him that he did not mind giving, and he quietly said, "I haven't felt like worthwhile company of late."


“Then we should discuss why that is before you leave our doors.” Aurelia said while gesturing Gerold to join her on the front porch steps of the Knightsbridge house. “Because I believe you are worthwhile company and would like to know what has changed to make you feel otherwise.”


Gerold looked at the house. He still wore his mustache with the curled tips that Seth actually had an opinion about, but that Liessel had thought attractive, and a tense frown, too. "Is she out?"


Knowing who 'she' was, Aurelia shook her head. "No but it is too early for her to be up. We can walk from the house if you'd feel more comfortable."


The old man's face almost never framed shame, but there was a tired shame there now as he said, "I would," now quietly with a different character. He was keeping his voice down.


Without any judgement, Aurelia's replied only with, "Give me just a few minutes." Before darting into the house.

True to her word, she returned no more than five minutes later. The robe replaced with a long black fur lined coat that covered her sleeping robes and her black boots. The coffee cup was also left back inside the house.

"I left a note with Avery that I went for a walk. If he wakes up before Liessel, he'll pass that onto her." She informed before nodding towards the street for them to walk.


Gerold let her precede him, and he eyed the front windows of the house before he went on after her. He'd been on his way to the train station, but that was cowardice. He'd given that its head; now something different was demanded of him, and he could slide back toward better behavior for it. Once they were out on the Square, he said, "I am sorry for the dramatics, Aurelia. Sorry to Liessel, most of all."


"I recall a time where I was also dramatic and it was you who was there for me." Aurelia said with a little smile of remembrance. "Let us consider this as me returning the favor."


It got a small laugh out of him, breaking some of the crust off of his demeanor, and he nodded. "Fair enough. Thank you." When he waited until they had left her address behind them, this time it was because he was thinking. He straightened a little and eyed the trees in the park, how the morning light came through them and filtered down to the grass and the street in flakes and a tidal surge of specks and streaks between shadows on the ground. "I hope to be myself. More myself. If I can go and do this one last thing." It occurred to him that Liessel might have talked to her already, but also that it was entirely realistic than she might not have. And there was a tatter of old, old memory in his mind's eye, trying to exist as an image but only truly managing to be an idea. "For Matthias van der Heide."


"For Matthias and not Seth?" Aurelia asked with the surprise of shock. Taking in a quick breath, she nodded. "What do you mean to go do, Gerold?"

It was a surprisingly cool summer morning. With the sun still down, there wasn't any humidity to contend with. The air was dewy and wet from a late night rain and promise for more. And it seemed, for now, the streets of London were theirs.


He looked at her. He knew she had a certain item. He hadn't been about to ask after it, in his current mood. Now he knew it would come up, because he said, "I'm going to find Leopold von Steinrengarde and kill him. For everything he's done. And that will let this sorry book be shut."


Aurelia walked a few steps while she let that sink in. And the question she found herself asking was "Why now?"


He laughed, just a breath with no voice, and sighed right after. "Why now. Why now...." He shook his head. "It's so big. I used to be able to see around it, but no more. It blocks my view of everything. Any future I could possibly have left. It's right in front of me like a wall. Von Steinrengarde... Seth... All of it. And Liessel...." He looked to Aurelia with a meaningful lingering. "That's not for her."


"But... why?" Aurelia asked. "Is it because of how he makes her feel uncomfortable? Help me understand why you feel like this must be done now?"

She had her suspicions; ones that were directly linked to his heart condition and the incident that happened before they left for Harroway. But she needed for Gerold to say it out loud and not leave room for assumptions.


"I'm going to die." It came out of him fast. Like he needed to say it just like that to get it out at all. He didn't leave it there, and didn't stop walking. "I am going to die, and... I'd like...." He breathed. Slowly, silently, feeling a tightening of emotion like a clenched fist. "Aurelia, I'd like to feel like myself when I go. Not--this. Angry man. Grasping man. Fearful man. And--" He nearly did stop moving, but kicked his foot forward again to keep going. "I'd like to love again. Have love to offer. Not be afraid. Of that. Before I go."


Aurelia's lips pursed together, her brows drawn in a tight pinch. The idea of Gerold dying was... hard.

Losing anyone who was loved so dearly would be.

"I see." She nodded slowly. "What did Liessle have to say when you told her this?"


His expression wanted to collapse, from pinched brows to a twisted mouth, but it only got halfway before he caught it by the collar. "That she loves me."


"Well... that is a very lovely sentiment. But did she have any other opinions about the subject?"


Their mutual pace had slowed. They weren't going to get anywhere at this rate, but, then, they weren't trying. "She understands. She supports me. She doesn't want me to think she wants me to choose between her and the work...." He grew quieter as he went on. "She wants whatever I can give her."

He looked at Aurelia, more than a glance. A pointed look. "I love her. I don't feel like I'm acting like it. I feel foreign to myself. But I can't get farther talking to her. Our talks wander where her experience ends and mine carries on. All I do is make her cry." He shook his head, feeling like his head was full to bursting with heat. "God, that's the last thing I want to be doing."


"Liessel is new to love." Aurelia said almost sadly. "I don't know if she knows how to truly process or navigate the complexities of it. I know when I was much younger that I did not. And that was without the complications that are sitting at your table."

She took in a slow breath.

"I don't think that's something that could be talked through. And it would require much more of Liessel than just decelerations of love."


"I know she is," Gerold said to Aurelia's first statement, softly and with a sigh. "We talked--in Harroway. I told her my fears. There were many. I don't think it occurred to her that I might have some, or that they would be so large."

The act of walking was helping. It leant a tempo. A slow, steady, living rhythm. Gerold fell into it easily. "I want back what we had before I said 'I love you.' When it was what it was, and I didn't fear it. I want it back, and I want to be who I should be with her at the same time. I feel as if... by telling her I love her... I made it more difficult for me to act like it. I...." He breathed it. "I feel as if... if I can just put right all that I've turned a blind eye to... I can have room to breathe, and I might be able to.... Reclaim, maybe. Reclaim how I felt before in love. In the past." He looked to her again. "Is that foolish?"


"No." Aurelia said as she walked along side Gerold. Down the street she could hear doors beginning to open as the working force of London's upper side begun to move their day beyond their comfortable homes.

"But I also do not know if it will give you the results that you are looking for." She added. "I support you in your endeavors against Von Steinrengarde. For as long as I've known you, I do not know the depths of your history with him, Matthias, and Seth. If this is something you must do, then I will help however I can."


"He was in on it. Matthias's murder." Gerold's mouth tightened and his teeth clenched as he said it, but the tension rolled through him and then away. This was not news. "And then he oversaw the capture of what was left, and all the humiliation of what came after. 'Seth' didn't care. I cared. And it was Matthias's face."


Nodding slowly, Aurelia glanced over at Gerold. "I've never seen you angry like this before." She said. "This whole thing must feel like the reopening of a large and painful wound."


I've never felt angry like this.

Was that true?

It felt true.

"I should never--" Gerold couldn't find his voice to cloak the words in it. "I should never have let that wound close in the first place. I should have killed Seth then, before he could become normal to me. I should have... thought for myself, Aurelia. I think--I don't know why I didn't--But I believed in what Von Steinrengarde said. And I trusted Ramsgate. And I thought... I don't know. I don't know."

Gerold stopped walking, eyes watering, his hands full so that he didn't bother wiping the tears away when they fell. "You were right. She's afraid of Seth. And she should be. And I can't have him here anymore. Not if I hope for something good for me and Liessel. He has to die at last."


"We've never really talked about the Frontiersmen and their involvement in Denver, have we? It's been there, just like the cane, sitting and waiting all this time. But we've never talked about it. I've never asked how you've felt or what you wanted to do. I'm sorry that it took this chain of events and for you to be carrying this pain for me to finally ask."


Gerold remembered the time after. He had been around at first, and they had spoken, but soon enough he and Seth had gotten to work trying to separate the wheat from the chaff within the organization, and that had consumed him for a time. It had consumed him, in fact, until River Runner, and then an Alfar, had dropped something huge in his path and blocked his way. After that, his heart had done the same thing again. "You don't have to apologize. I owe all the apologies these days. I fear more now than I think I ever have. What I told Liessel in Harroway... I know that even if I kill him, and Seth dies, there's still no guarantee that we could be happy. She's so tentative. The things I love about her, she so rarely dares to show. She's so young, and practically birthed into this new life, and I don't want her to spend it nursing me."


"Liessel does fall into the pattern of becoming a caregiver so quickly. But that doesn't mean she can't grow with you instead of just taking care of you." Aurelia replied. "What did she say when you told her that?"


"Not much." Gerold winced a little. "She just wants time with me. I'm honored--truly--but I can't find the place in me that's more grateful for it, and touched by it, than concerned that she doesn't realize what it could mean for her." He thought about that, glancing up the walk, but aside from a distant barking dog and a few peripheral signs of servants stirring, Trevor Square itself was empty even of early deliveries. "That's what I'm hunting, maybe." He turned his attention back to Aurelia. "The capacity to feel joy. To feel alive. Without all this sadness."


"It's strange how quickly our roles have reversed. I remember the desperate feeling of wanting to be with Avery, of how much it hurt to think that we couldn't be together because of the dangers and what it meant. I couldn't see past anything beyond the hope that one day I would be free of the Dark." Aurelia said while they walked, through her pace was starting to slow.

"I understand the feeling you have. That need to close this part of your life so that you can even have the smallest hope of something new."


Taking her pace again, the Frontiersman was silent for a time after that. He remembered. The breath that finally came out of him was not fully a laugh, but a little easing all the same. "I felt terrible, you know, when I realized that I might not be able to say some things to Liessel--that I was thinking you might understand. But I think now that some little part of me was just wiser than the rest of me. I can't tell you what an honor it was to be part of you freeing yourself. What a spark of real hope that was for me. I don't think I've ever tried to say it, but I should have."

"I remember thinking that if you could forge such a path, perhaps I could for Seth. --I don't know that I have time for that now, but it was a moment when I felt that perhaps I could make that kind of difference again for someone."


"You know from my experience that I will always believe that there is a chance for that. And I want you to know," She paused, reaching for his hand.

"I will gladly cancel whatever holiday I am about to embark on if you need me by your side for what you do next. I understand if this is something you need to do on your own, but I am here if you need anything."


It was the hand with his umbrella in it, but Gerold freed two fingers and a thumb to answer that gesture, tightening them against her hand. "I know you would. I know all of you would," he said in a voice thick with feeling. "And I may yet call upon you. But I... I want you to have your rest. I don't like the idea that I would stop that. That that would stop for me. For now, while I get my bearings, I think Seth and I will be all right."


"I love you, Gerold." She said with a gentle squeeze. "Very deeply. I wish there was more that I could offer than comforting words and what little advice I can offer. But I want you to know, I truly do understand why you need to do this. And I want nothing more than for it to give you the happiness and freedom that you've been missing for so long."


He released her hand and, umbrella and all, put his arm around her to hug her gently. "There is something, Aurelia."


Aurelia, whose own hands were free, wrapped her arms tightly around Gerold.

"You need the cane, don't you?" She asked in reply.


"I'd planned to go to Germany, actually. I wasn't going to ask after the blasted thing. If you have done all you can with it, however, I'll walk back with you and take it off your hands." He didn't budge, though. "What I was thinking about just now was Liessel."


"We can get it." She nodded. Upon seeing that he wasn't moving yet, Aurelia also did not start to move.

"What about Liessel?"


It took him a moment. His arm loosened in that time, freeing her, and he looked over her head toward the end of the Square while his mustache twitched whenever he worked his jaw. "I...." He shook his head, closed his mouth, was silent for another many heartbeats before he tried again, meeting Aurelia's green eyes. "I have done a lot of talking with her, but I haven't been able to say what I want to say. I tried writing her a letter, and just wasted paper."

He stepped back and took in a deep breath. "When I picture what I could offer her... have with her... it's us on horseback, under a vast sky streaked with clouds... and it's a whole world spread out around us. And there's peace there. Enough for us. For her father, too. We eat breakfast together, and we smoke our pipes together--" He laughed, lowering his head. "We read books and talk about them, and we have you all in, and we can look at each other and see who the other is... without shame, or fear. That's what I picture, that I can't say. And that I can't live. Because I don't know if it can be real."


"It is a lovely life. She deserves to hear that. And I feel as though you deserve to say that to her. Maybe not now. But maybe after." Aurelia replied before adding with a question. "Why can't you say those things to her?"


Gerold eyed her, and then the straight-faced expression developed a crooked smile as he admitted, "I was going to ask if you would tell her that. But I agree that might be the coward's way out." He coughed a little, bemused, and shook his head. To her other question came silence in the wake of that, while he felt around for words.

It wasn't that the topic was a desert of words, but that there were so many.

"I'm not settled about any of it--any of it at all. I know what I feel. But I also know that I'm old. I hate it, but it's here. My time will come. And she's so young, Aurelia. She's barely brushed having a life of her own. I feel that if I lean toward this--reach--for her--that I'll trap her before she's even tried her wings. And I could never, ever forgive myself if I did that."

He wasn't finished, but he needed a moment to breathe. He made that happen, forced some orderliness from his body, and sucked in one last deep breath before he whispered fiercely: "And of course she'd tend to me! And of course she'll say she doesn't mind. Forget that she's never minded her whole life being given over in service to others, and just see what I see for one moment: she's so young," he said again, the emphasis different this time. "How could she really know what I would cost her?"


"You know there's no easy way out of this, right? There's no magic answer that will change the reality of your circumstances regardless of where Seth's role comes into place." Aurelia said. "There is a considerable age gap that puts the two of you at different ends of the spectrum - and that is more than just a number. But at the end of the day, Liessel is allowed to make her choice and you need to decide if that is something you can or cannot live with."


"I do...." he said to her first question, even if it was rhetorical. She went on, and he listened, and at the end, he had to sigh, but he nodded, too. "I know. I know." Another sigh, as if that was what his lungs could manage. "Is this all terribly tiresome?"


"Not at all." She shook her head. "But I can imagine how it must feel so."

Reaching for his hand again, Aurelia gave a sympathetic squeeze.


He let her take it. "You're very kind. --I haven't felt this turned around in fifty years."


"Love will do that." She said. "But even more so when it is as complicated as this."


Gerold nodded again. "Tell her I'll be back, would you?"


"I will. You have my word, Gerold."


The squeeze he gave her hand came from his thumb only, but he nodded to her and stepped away.