Work Text:
There’s a smile of her master’s that Fern has only begun to comprehend.
It appears often — ghostlike but lasting, quiet but piercing, fond but oh so lonely — as she restores the hero’s statue back to its pristine smooth coppertones, retraces the numerous paths she has taken some eight decades prior, and cradles close the gifts from a lifespan ago.
Not for the first time did Fern wonder: what is love to an elf who can live for tens of thousands of years? What could it have been that Frieren was feeling every time she held the hero Himmel’s name between her teeth, uttering it fulfilled with memories she hasn’t yet told.
But her master wasn’t sad, that much she’s sure of. Because Fern knows sadness intimately, lives with it as a survivor of guilt and emptiness and nights wondering what else could there be in this life beyond what she was given by her parents and Heiter.
Sadness doesn’t look like this; doesn’t look like that warm sunset when Frieren grows blue moonweed flowers atop an abandoned tower then around an old statue, doesn’t look like that gentle winter when she shares the story behind the Hero’s Blade, doesn’t look like that dewy morning when she finds the mirrored lotus ring, doesn’t look like the welcome mundane of traveling and living.
Sadness doesn’t look like this picture of her master, who looks the most satisfied when she connects previous lifetimes with this one and progresses with understanding the people surrounding her.
It wasn’t a special day by any means. They stopped by a quaint but fruitful village and decided to stay the night in the nearby inn. As always, Fern rooms with her master. There’s a window between the heads of their beds, the cloudless sky giving way to the moonlight now that Fern extinguished the candlelight. Her master closes a book she was sure Frieren has read before, knowing that Fern will be insistent on bedtime.
“Frieren-sama.” The night wasn’t special at all, but Fern wanted to say something different all the same. “I know we’re barely halfway to Aureole, but when we get there… have you thought about what you’d like to say to Himmel-sama?”
Frieren closes her eyes as if thinking. “Well, that’s assuming Heaven does exist after all.”
“But you wouldn’t be on this journey if you don’t believe in it even just a little, would you?” Fern resolves.
“I suppose…” There’s a small thump as Frieren throws her body to the bed, eyes open and staring at the wooden ceiling. “I suppose it’s because I haven’t given it much thought.”
“How about now? What comes to your mind first?”
“You’re a bit determined on this one, huh? Not that I can blame you.” Green eyes slid to her. “Journeying with Heaven as the end destination sounds a bit stupid, even for me. Sounds a lot like dying for nothing.”
Fern pouts. “You know that’s not what I mean!”
“Alright, don’t sulk,” Frieren placates. "I’ll think about it."
There’s a smile of her master’s that Fern, as she realizes, has only begun to comprehend.
It appears often — ghostlike but lasting, quiet but piercing, fond but oh so lonely.
“I’ll probably tell him–”
This one is the same. It’s directed towards her but Fern is sure that Frieren is seeing someone else at this moment.
“– how happy I am to have been by his side – how I have never been lonely since even as we are now.”
Frieren said it so softly, so truthfully and raw that Fern aches .
Again Fern wonders: what is love to an elf who can live for tens of thousands of years?
“Those are wonderful words, Frieren-sama.” Fern pulls a smile of her own, praying to the Goddess that it wasn’t at all transparent and watery, “If you’d allow me, I want to be there when you say that to Himmel-sama personally.”
Frieren pulls her blanket and breathes lightly. “Of course you’ll be there. You have some words for Heiter too, don’t you?”
But then, it could only be devotion. To Fern, who barely lived twenty years, love and devotion is one and the same. But for her master, there must be a distinction Fern can’t delineate yet.
It could only be devotion that dictates her master’s being, controlling her so potently that consciously or not, she is guided to traverse again the road Himmel the Hero had walked, if only so she could finally start unraveling the trove of emotions from the past she continues to feel but wasn’t able to fathom.
“Yes.” Fern turns to her master, unsurprised that she’s already asleep. “Good night, Frieren-sama. May your dreams be kind tonight.”
Beneath her eyelids, Frieren smiles, remembers blue eyes and the present, and thinks how lovely it is as well to have lived as long as she has — to have met all these treasured companions.