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Basically the Klaus-Gil-Zeetha reunion/confrontation I've been wanting to write for a while, with bonus Agatha slapping Klaus upside the head. (Metaphorically. Mostly). To warn you, I went with pretty much the angstiest, schmoopiest, most OTT version of the reunion that I could think of. This isn't remotely how I think canon will go, this is just pure Wulfenbach-Skifandrian-Heterodyne family feels idfic of the highest order.
Um. Apologies in advance?
Title: Surrenders Small And Vast
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Girl Genius
Characters/Pairings: Gil, Klaus, Zeetha, Agatha, Higgs, Tarvek, mention of Zantabraxus and Lucrezia. Gil & Zeetha & Klaus, Zeetha & Agatha, Klaus & Agatha, Gil/Agatha/Tarvek, Zeetha/Higgs, Klaus/Zantabraxus
Summary: In the close aftermath of the stasis field coming down, once everyone is mostly cured and back in their correct bodies, the prospect of a journey to Skifander in search of aid sparks a confrontation between Gil, his father, Agatha, and the sister Gil hadn't realised he had
Wordcount: 4787
Warnings/Notes: Angst, schmoop, OTT, and Tarvek gets a little shafted by my priorities
Disclaimer: Not mine
Um. Apologies in advance?
Title: Surrenders Small And Vast
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Girl Genius
Characters/Pairings: Gil, Klaus, Zeetha, Agatha, Higgs, Tarvek, mention of Zantabraxus and Lucrezia. Gil & Zeetha & Klaus, Zeetha & Agatha, Klaus & Agatha, Gil/Agatha/Tarvek, Zeetha/Higgs, Klaus/Zantabraxus
Summary: In the close aftermath of the stasis field coming down, once everyone is mostly cured and back in their correct bodies, the prospect of a journey to Skifander in search of aid sparks a confrontation between Gil, his father, Agatha, and the sister Gil hadn't realised he had
Wordcount: 4787
Warnings/Notes: Angst, schmoop, OTT, and Tarvek gets a little shafted by my priorities
Disclaimer: Not mine
Surrenders Small And Vast
"I'm going home!" Zeetha trilled, swinging happily around Agatha's shoulders. "Oh, they're going to be so happy to meet you, zumil! And Axel, you have to meet my grandmama, she's going to love you!"
"I'm sure," Higgs muttered, grimacing faintly, but by the time Zeetha had swung back around his way he'd pasted a bland, noncommittal smile back on his face. "I look forward to it," he said instead, brightly earnest, and only slumped a little bit when her suspicious look swung away from him and back to the rest of the party.
"You know, whatever about you, I think I'm looking forward to seeing that," Gil murmured beside him, elbowing him with a tired, evil little grin. "The unflappable Higgs finally flapped. Might be worth the trip just for that."
"Shove it up your rear hangar, sir," Higgs shot back amiably, chewing lightly on his pipe and entirely unperturbed. "I'll have you know that I'm--"
Gil didn't get to hear whatever it was he was, though, because Higgs cut himself off to stare over Gil's shoulder in sudden bemusement and maybe half alarm. Gil, having heard the person behind him stir and heave themselves to their feet, already knew what he'd see when he turned around, but he did it anyway, feeling his shoulders tense a little automatically. He met his father's eyes directly, a frown of confusion and challenge already fixed on his face.
Klaus grimaced faintly at the sight of it, but straightened himself regardless, his expression regretful but that terrible mix of sure and determined that never, ever boded well with him. Gil bit his lip, and held his tongue until he knew exactly what he'd have to fight about first.
"You're not going," Klaus rasped softly. He was swaying a little bit, the revenant cure really took it out of you for the first while afterwards, but that fire was back in his eyes, the one you could use to forge steel. "Whatever about the rest of them, Gil, you can't go. Not to Skifander."
Gil growled softly, ignoring how the others had fallen into startled silence behind him. "Someone has to, father," he said, low and determined. "You have to agree to that. The key to this whole mess is there. It's not like you to leave that kind of thing to other people. If you're worried about the Empire in our absence, only one of us need go, and since you're cured now, you can--"
"I don't care about the Empire!" Klaus snapped back, and Gil's mouth clicked shut in shock. It wasn't the only one. Klaus glowered, lowering his head mulishly, but didn't back down. "No. Obviously I care about the Empire. But that's not the point. Gil, you cannot go to Skifander. You, specifically. You can't go. I forbid it."
That snapped Gil out of it, a rush of fury and old pain surging through him. He stalked towards his father, his hands curling into fists. His father, exhausted and already-regretful as he was, faced him down, head up and brows lowered dangerously.
"Forbid?" Gil asked, very softly. Much, much more venomously than he would ever have dreamed previously, but it had been a long three years. Long, and very hard, and he had changed somewhat in the course of them. "At this point, father, I don't think you can forbid me anything. We passed that point when your copy was removed from my head, wouldn't you say?"
"Gil," Agatha murmured, behind him. Not admonishing, not exactly. She understood too well for that. But reminding him, a little. Of caution, if not compassion. Things had been complicated on all sides recently. It did no harm to remember that.
"Would you like me to apologise?" Klaus asked, equally soft, his head tilted to the side and an odd expression on his face, one that Gil didn't entirely recognise. "I will. I do. I'm sorry for what I felt was necessary, and I'm sorry for what you endured because of it. It was an extreme I wish I had never been driven to. I am sorry, Gil. But what's done is done, and regardless of it I need you to listen to me now. Skifander is death for you. You cannot go there."
Gil opened his mouth, bitterness and satisfaction, unwilling longing, swirling through him, but something stopped him. Some fragment of memory, lost in the slew of crises since then. A snatch of remembered conversation, from when things had only just been starting to go wrong.
"... You kept me alive," he murmured, rubbing his fingers thoughtfully, and saw the tired acknowledgement in his father's eyes. "You said you'd explain that. You never got the chance."
"No," Klaus agreed tiredly. "I wondered if perhaps my copy might have mentioned it, but apparently not."
"No," Gil said, mouth twisting slightly. "We didn't have that kind of rapport. I wasn't really surprised. Explanations were never your strongest point, father."
Klaus closed his eyes for a second, dropping his chin towards his chest a bit. Not shame, Klaus Wulfenbach didn't do shame, but maybe a twinge of regret, at the very least. It was, oddly, almost enough for Gil. Maybe more than. He'd never not loved his father. And if the Empire taught you anything, it was not to blame people too much for choices made in slavery. Desperation drove many things. Gil had first hand experience of that.
Before he could mention any of that, though, before he could offer his father an olive branch, someone else intervened.
Zeetha moved towards them, a strange, careful hesitance in her steps, enough that both Agatha and Higgs trailed after her worriedly, Tarvek a little ways behind them. She stopped about at about equal distance between Gil and Klaus, her eyes tracking between them. Gil blinked, shifting towards her. She looked ... strange. Worried? Hopeful? Some mix of both, perhaps. She looked like there was something she was afraid to think too hard, but she wanted it too much not to.
"... Chump," she said at last, looking straight at Gil's father. "You are Chump, consort of my mother Queen Zantabraxus of Skifander. Aren't you."
Her eyes were wide, her whole body canted towards Gil's father, and there was a thread of something almost desperate in her voice. Gil, who's heart had traitorously stuttered even as she said it, half-remembered details about her father the foreigner and shared Skifandrian mental techniques already having sketched a half-hopeful hypothesis in the back of his mind, understood why. They stilled, the both of them, looking at Klaus with a kind of trembling anticipation, and he seemed to almost freeze in the face of them. He looked between them, Gil on the one side caught between anger, remorse and hope, Zeetha on the other, earnest and intense, and something wild and full of pain passed across his features.
"Your mother," he murmured, shaking his head. "Of course she is. Of course it would be her daughter she sent." He curled his hands into loose, careful fists, and moved a little towards Gil. Slow, almost drifting, and bizarrely defensive. "And what did your mother tell you about her consort, Highness?"
Zeetha blinked, startled hurt visibly flickering through her, and looked at the way Gil's father had moved defensively between her and ... and her brother? Gil twitched, the thought running like a live wire through him, a strange, painful idea beginning to take shape in his mind.
He'd never known his mother. He'd tried to imagine her many times, but something had always seemed to falter inside him before he really managed it. Von Pinn had been mother enough, or so he'd told himself, and once he'd found out who his father was it had more or less taken precedence over almost everything. At least until Agatha, anyway. But he'd never stopped ... he'd never stopped wondering.
And now, he was wondering if he wanted to know after all. If his father thought returning to her lands would be death for him. If his father warned him that her emissaries might be sent to kill him, and moved protectively between him and ... and his sister, his father's own daughter.
Did he want to know the truth behind that? Did he want to know why his father seemed to fear that Gil's mother might want him dead?
Yes. Actually, yes. Anger seeped through him, familiar after three years, cold and strengthening in the face of betrayal once again. Gil looked at his father's shoulder in front of him, at his sister's hurt, desperate face beyond it, and felt something not unlike a calm curiosity steal across him.
After a second, Zeetha straightened too. Not calm, not anger, but determination, Gil thought. Proud, confused determination, steady in the face of his father's suspicion. She looked Klaus straight in the eye, and answered clearly and confidently.
"She told me he was a foreigner," she said, watching them carefully. "A barbarian warrior, one of the fiercest she'd ever seen. A man of great pride and virility." She smiled a little, and Gil muffled a snort. Thank you, he thought wryly. Thanks for that image. "She said that he had stayed long enough to gift her with a strong daughter, but that he had been forced to leave again not long afterwards. Responsibility had called him away, to care for people in his own lands."
Klaus flinched. Gil watched him, watched the judder run through him, and saw Zeetha catch it as well. He saw some fragment of realisation dawn on his sister's face.
"Responsibility," Klaus repeated. Soft, contemplative. And sad. "Yes. Not to people I had left behind, though. Or not when I left. I didn't know then what had happened in my absence. But I left out of responsibility, yes. To a child I was told would not survive in his mother's lands. A child who would not be allowed to survive. To take care of him, out of responsibility to him, I was indeed forced to leave."
Zeetha stared at him, something deep and shocked in her eyes. She shook her head, glancing at Gil again over his father's shoulder, looking back at her father in turn.
"You thought my mother would let someone hurt him?" she asked, denial strong in her voice. "You thought she would let someone harm her family?"
"I thought," Klaus interrupted, almost gently, "that she might not have a choice, not without damaging her own standing or the security of her people. I thought that it might put her in danger to defy so longstanding a belief, risk dividing her people around her." He shook his head, a wealth of bitter experience in his voice. "A ruler does not always get to choose the love of their family over the security of their people. It would have cost her to protect us. Worse, it might have cost her kingdom. Her people. I had a way to avoid that. It wasn't ... It was not what I had hoped for, but I thought it would spare us both, and allow both our children their fairest chance. I thought it would keep all of us safe, or at the very least alive."
~A ruler doesn't always get to choose his family over his people.~
Gil groped behind him blindly. Looking for a wall, a bench, anything. Something to hold him up, something to help him. He breathed carefully, shallowly. He could hear the conviction in his father's voice. He could hear the strength of his belief, and he knew the truth of it. He had a memory of another presence in his head to remind how much his father believed that.
Zeetha, it seemed, had a simpler concern. A much more elemental upset, coursing through her with all the strength of a warrior's passion. She looked at her father, standing protectively in front of her brother, and it was a very simple sort of hurt that filled the question she asked.
"You think she sent me here. You think I'm supposed to hurt him. He's my brother. If you're my father, that makes him my brother. Did you really think I'd hurt him?"
Klaus growled, a rush of frustration and ... and something else seeming to run through him. He twitched forward, half a step towards Zeetha, one hand darting upwards in aimless frustration.
"We don't always get a choice," he managed, and his voice cracked suddenly out from under him. Something else, something else. Not Zeetha at all. Gil heard it. He knew what it was. He knew why. Klaus shook his head, a rumble of pure and desperate frustration in his chest, and abruptly Zeetha snapped. She darted forward, ignoring the hands her father had half-raised instinctively against her, and hit his chest at a run, her arms wrapping desperately around him.
Klaus staggered backwards, too weak still to catch himself properly, and Gil found himself darting forward in the same breath. He found his arms wrapping automatically around his father from behind even as his sister's wrapped around him from the front, and he braced all three of them against the fall. He caught them. He wasn't completely sure how. And then he held them, held tight and desperate and instinctive, and wasn't completely sure why.
But he didn't let go. He couldn't. He couldn't even think it.
"My name is Zeetha, daughter of Chump," Zeetha whispered fiercely, her arms tight around their father's chest. "I am kolee to Agatha Heterodyne, and sister to Gilgamesh Wulfenbach who is her consort. I chose them willingly, and will defend them with all my strength. And I will defend my father, even though he's an idiot who thought I'd hurt my brother!"
"That isn't--" Klaus said, his voice choked and his hands hovering over his daughter's back. "There's at least three factions in that alone. That isn't--"
"For heaven's sake, father, shut up," Gil whispered, finding his voice at last, feeling Zeetha wind happy fingers in his shirtfront for hearing it. "We'll fix it. We'll figure it out. Agatha is helping. We're allies, we're on the same side, not everyone is out to get us. So shut up and hug my sister, because I don't want to fight you, and I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want to lose you again."
The breath left his father in a rush. Gil felt it, felt his father's body slump in his arms and curl around the other body in front of him. Klaus crumpled around Zeetha, leaned helplessly backwards into Gil's arms, and Gil realised with a dull, distant shock that he was feeling Klaus Wulfenbach surrender. He was feeling his father give in. He'd ... he'd made him give in. No-one else, no other force in all the world, had ever made that happen. His father had fought at every turn, had defied war and death and slavery with nothing save pure, willful determination, always resisting, always fighting, sacrificing everything even up to his family in the cause, but Gil ...
Gil had made him surrender. Just now. Just with a sentence. Because his father had heard him, and his father had given in.
It was ... it was horrifying. It was backwards, and wrong, and terrifying. Nothing could stop his father. Nothing could make him give in. Klaus had planted a shadow of himself inside Gil, had left his own body in stasis and possessed his own son in order to fight on, to defy what had been done to him. Klaus didn't give in, and not to Gil, never to Gil, Klaus had overwritten Gil rather than surrender. But his father was tired now. And sorry. And old, Gil had never thought of him as old, but then he'd never ...
His father was always supposed to be there. Stronger than anything, able to stand up to everything. He was supposed to come back, and cheat death, and cheat the Other, and even if Gil had to fight him, even if he was Gil's enemy sometimes and threatened so much that Gil loved, he was still supposed to be there. He wasn't supposed to lose, he wasn't supposed to be old or tired or weak. Gil wasn't supposed to be stronger than him, because if Gil was stronger than him then Gil was stronger than anybody, anybody except maybe Agatha, and that meant it was all on him. That meant it was Gil's responsibility. The Empire. The Other. All of it.
And Klaus. His father. He was Gil's responsibility too. The man who'd hurt him, and brainwashed him, and left him alone to keep an Empire together. The man who'd raised him, the man who'd protected him even if it meant abandoning him. The man who'd left his wife and his daughter behind, everything he'd hoped for, and come back to a world at war to keep Gil safe.
The man who was holding the daughter he'd never thought he'd see again, the daughter he'd been willing to fight for Gil's sake, and leaning back into Gil's arms like all the strength had run out of him.
Gil's responsibility. His to take care of. His to keep safe. Both of them. All of them. Because he loved them, and that was what responsibility meant.
"... I wish you'd warned me," he whispered, burying his head in his father's shoulder. "I don't want to be the Baron. I don't want to be the strong one. It hurts."
Klaus laughed, a hitching snort of pained amusement, and managed to get his feet back under him. Stood up, took his weight off Gil for a moment, in order to ... to let go of Zeetha a little, to reach around and grab Gil's arm, to tug Gil in front of him where Klaus could hug him as well. Gil stumbled, bewildered by the gesture, and Zeetha grabbed him as well, pulled him in to nestle against their father's chest with her. His sister. His father. Gil felt his knees tremble, and let them catch him and keep him safe between them. Just for a second.
"I wanted you to be strong enough to manage it," Klaus murmured, holding them close against him. "I knew Zan would keep your sister safe. I knew she'd make her strong enough to rule a kingdom, to face anything. I promised her I'd do the same with you. It ... it should have only been a barony. It should have been just Wulfenbach. But then, when we came back ..."
When they came back, there'd been nothing left. And they'd been strong enough to do something about it. And there'd been too many people hurting not to try.
"You needed to be strong," his father said. "I knew I'd have to abandon you. To lie to you. When the Empire was established, when I realised what it meant, I knew that ... that someday I might have to betray you. To trade you for it, the way Zantabraxus had to trade me, us. I wanted you to be strong enough to survive that. To survive me. I didn't know the Other would return. I didn't know what Lucrezia would do to us. But I was always afraid I'd have to hurt you regardless. I wanted ... I wanted to believe that no matter what I had to do, you would always be strong enough to survive it. And because of that I ..."
"I know," Gil said, ducking his head into his father's shoulder, wanting to cut him off, wanting him not to say it. Not to remind them both, remind them all. "I get it. And I don't ... I always understood. I didn't like it, but I always understood. I never hated you. I just ... didn't always like you very much."
His father chuckled breathlessly, his hand reaching up to cradle the back of Gil's head, holding it safe against his shoulder. "I can live with that," he said softly, an equal forgiveness maybe. "I could have lived with your hatred, too. Just so long as you lived."
"... You know, I never thought I'd say this," Agatha said, and Gil almost jolted out of his father's arms in shock. He'd almost ... he almost forgotten she was there. He turned to her, met Zeetha's bemused gaze in passing, and found her standing behind them looking up at Gil's father, the oddest, gentlest expression on her face. "It's not the sort of thing one thinks needs saying, especially not to you. But did you ever think, Herr Baron, that maybe your goals aren't high enough?"
They blinked at her, all three of them, and she smiled abruptly, big and bright and more than a little sparky, leaning towards them so intently that Gil felt his father instinctively lean away a little bit.
"I'm not sure I understand your reasoning," Klaus answered her, raising an eyebrow in bemused and perhaps sarcastic wariness. "Are ruling Europa, defeating the Other and saving my family not lofty enough for you?"
Agatha shook her head, grinning darkly, and oh, she really was a Heterodyne, wasn't she? The strongest, sparkiest Heterodyne in years. She leaned forward, peering up into the Baron's face, and Gil found himself staring at her from very close indeed, that same bright distant awe inside him that she'd always called from him.
"That's what makes it hard to think it about you," Agatha agreed, nodding seriously. "You don't do anything by halves, Herr Baron, and everyone is too awed and scared of you to wonder if that's always true. To wonder if maybe there are things you don't let yourself have, because you're afraid to want them, and that means you don't fight for them the way you should."
Zeetha started grinning. Gil was staring at Agatha, and his father was perhaps in some mild form of shock, but Zeetha started grinning. Maybe she knew something Gil didn't. Or maybe she just knew her zumil better.
"It's not enough to want them to live," Agatha said, the manic light of conviction in her eyes. "You know what? It's not enough. If you're the despotic tyrant of a continent and you still have to choose between the things you love, you're not doing it right! Have it all! Have your family, have your wife, have your Empire, have your enemies on their knees in front of you! Fight for it, for all of it. Fight to ... to have happiness, to have love, to have your people safe. To have a home and a family. You're strong enough! We're strong enough. All of us. You, and me, and Gil, and Tarvek, and Zeetha, we're all strong. We could be strong together. We could make it safe, so we could have everyone. If you just stopped being afraid, being paranoid, if you let us work with you, we could do it. There would be nobody in the world strong enough to stop us, if you would just be willing to fight for it!"
She was shouting by the end of it, standing on her toes in front of them, alive and furious and vibrating with desperate energy. Gil could almost see her Spark, he thought distantly, he could almost see the raw, incredible strength of her in front of him, pouring out at him. He could see Tarvek behind her, looking at her the same way. She was ... she was incredible. She was beyond that. She was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.
"You have to stop being afraid," Agatha said, and she reached out to touch his father's cheek. There was a little tremor through her confidence as she did so, something that might have been embarrassment, but she bore through it, held the Baron captive despite it. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to hurt Gil, or Zeetha, or anyone you love. I'm going to help them. I'm going to destroy everyone who threatens them, my mother very much included. I love them too. I love them so much. And I'm going to fight for them. To have them, to love them, to keep them safe. I wish ... I wish you'd help me. I want to help you."
"Zumil!" Zeetha exclaimed, snapping out a hand to grab Agatha's, to hold on and grin at her in giddy, breathless delight.
Gil, though, just stared. His father too. The pair of them, stupefied, simply breathless. Gil looked up, looked at his father's face, and he saw ... he saw hope. He saw something that wanted so badly to trust, to be able to, to be allowed. His father had trusted the other Heterodynes, Gil remembered. His father had been their friend, had fought beside them, had mourned for them. His father had protected their people. He wanted to trust Agatha. Gil could see how much he wanted that.
But she was right, he realised. She'd been right from the start. His father was afraid. Of her, of wanting to trust her, of having her use that want as her mother had used it. Afraid of being betrayed, afraid of watching his family and his people be destroyed because of it. He was afraid to let himself risk it, because to risk it would be to surrender, and that of all things his father had never ... never done ...
Until now. Until today. Until Gil.
Oh. Oh please. Please let this work. Gil wanted it. He wanted it all, he wanted everything. He wanted Agatha and his father both, he wanted his sister and his mother, he wanted not to have to choose between them, he wanted to keep them all. He wanted it so badly, and Agatha was right. They were strong, they were strong enough, and they could fight for it. They could make it work. Please.
"Father," he said, very quietly. Klaus looked down at him, a slow roll of his head that looked almost automatic, and Gil stared into the eyes of a man he'd never thought could be weak, and who he desperately wanted to be brave. "She's right. You know she's right. We could do it, father. We can go to Skifander, and we can figure out how to stop this, and we can do it together. All of us. I want to. I want that. I ... I don't want to lose any of you again."
And there was ... there was a flicker. In his father's eyes. There was a tremor, and a change, and something moved. Something shifted, became different, and Gil felt hope so strong it almost hurt. He saw something change in his father, and felt sick with how much he needed it to be what he hoped.
"... They'll try to kill you," Klaus said softly. Looking at him, holding his daughter at his side, with Agatha leaning close. "If you go there, even if your mother would fight for you, there will still be those who try to kill you."
Gil grinned. He couldn't help it. He bared his teeth, and it was not at all happy, maybe, but it was triumphant. It was rich and proud and full of all the defiance in the world.
"Then you'll stop them," he said. "Or I will. Or Zeetha will. Or Agatha. My mother, even. No matter what happens, one of us will stop it. We'll win. We'll fight until we win, and we won't give up, and we'll make them stop." He knotted his hand in the back of his father's shirt, holding tight, and let every last ounce of his faith bleed forward. He had three years of anger and pain and strength to build from. He had all the strength in the world, as much as any of them and more. "Father. We can do this. Let us try. This once, let us try."
And this time, this surrender, wasn't horrifying. It wasn't wrong. It was trust, it was hope, it was good and right and perfect, and when Klaus finally nodded his head, finally gave in this one more time, Gil wrapped his arms around him, hugged him close to breaking point, and all but cried in happiness. He didn't even care. Not for dignity, not for any of it. He grabbed his father and his sister, felt Agatha grab hold of him in turn, and held them while he cried.
Let Lucrezia fight them now. Let the Other come for them, let Skifander come for them, let the whole damn world take issue with them now. They'd beat them. They'd beat all of them. Just watch. While it was them, while it was his family all together, there was no goal too high, and no force in the world strong enough to take them down.
From this point onwards, not one.
"I'm going home!" Zeetha trilled, swinging happily around Agatha's shoulders. "Oh, they're going to be so happy to meet you, zumil! And Axel, you have to meet my grandmama, she's going to love you!"
"I'm sure," Higgs muttered, grimacing faintly, but by the time Zeetha had swung back around his way he'd pasted a bland, noncommittal smile back on his face. "I look forward to it," he said instead, brightly earnest, and only slumped a little bit when her suspicious look swung away from him and back to the rest of the party.
"You know, whatever about you, I think I'm looking forward to seeing that," Gil murmured beside him, elbowing him with a tired, evil little grin. "The unflappable Higgs finally flapped. Might be worth the trip just for that."
"Shove it up your rear hangar, sir," Higgs shot back amiably, chewing lightly on his pipe and entirely unperturbed. "I'll have you know that I'm--"
Gil didn't get to hear whatever it was he was, though, because Higgs cut himself off to stare over Gil's shoulder in sudden bemusement and maybe half alarm. Gil, having heard the person behind him stir and heave themselves to their feet, already knew what he'd see when he turned around, but he did it anyway, feeling his shoulders tense a little automatically. He met his father's eyes directly, a frown of confusion and challenge already fixed on his face.
Klaus grimaced faintly at the sight of it, but straightened himself regardless, his expression regretful but that terrible mix of sure and determined that never, ever boded well with him. Gil bit his lip, and held his tongue until he knew exactly what he'd have to fight about first.
"You're not going," Klaus rasped softly. He was swaying a little bit, the revenant cure really took it out of you for the first while afterwards, but that fire was back in his eyes, the one you could use to forge steel. "Whatever about the rest of them, Gil, you can't go. Not to Skifander."
Gil growled softly, ignoring how the others had fallen into startled silence behind him. "Someone has to, father," he said, low and determined. "You have to agree to that. The key to this whole mess is there. It's not like you to leave that kind of thing to other people. If you're worried about the Empire in our absence, only one of us need go, and since you're cured now, you can--"
"I don't care about the Empire!" Klaus snapped back, and Gil's mouth clicked shut in shock. It wasn't the only one. Klaus glowered, lowering his head mulishly, but didn't back down. "No. Obviously I care about the Empire. But that's not the point. Gil, you cannot go to Skifander. You, specifically. You can't go. I forbid it."
That snapped Gil out of it, a rush of fury and old pain surging through him. He stalked towards his father, his hands curling into fists. His father, exhausted and already-regretful as he was, faced him down, head up and brows lowered dangerously.
"Forbid?" Gil asked, very softly. Much, much more venomously than he would ever have dreamed previously, but it had been a long three years. Long, and very hard, and he had changed somewhat in the course of them. "At this point, father, I don't think you can forbid me anything. We passed that point when your copy was removed from my head, wouldn't you say?"
"Gil," Agatha murmured, behind him. Not admonishing, not exactly. She understood too well for that. But reminding him, a little. Of caution, if not compassion. Things had been complicated on all sides recently. It did no harm to remember that.
"Would you like me to apologise?" Klaus asked, equally soft, his head tilted to the side and an odd expression on his face, one that Gil didn't entirely recognise. "I will. I do. I'm sorry for what I felt was necessary, and I'm sorry for what you endured because of it. It was an extreme I wish I had never been driven to. I am sorry, Gil. But what's done is done, and regardless of it I need you to listen to me now. Skifander is death for you. You cannot go there."
Gil opened his mouth, bitterness and satisfaction, unwilling longing, swirling through him, but something stopped him. Some fragment of memory, lost in the slew of crises since then. A snatch of remembered conversation, from when things had only just been starting to go wrong.
"... You kept me alive," he murmured, rubbing his fingers thoughtfully, and saw the tired acknowledgement in his father's eyes. "You said you'd explain that. You never got the chance."
"No," Klaus agreed tiredly. "I wondered if perhaps my copy might have mentioned it, but apparently not."
"No," Gil said, mouth twisting slightly. "We didn't have that kind of rapport. I wasn't really surprised. Explanations were never your strongest point, father."
Klaus closed his eyes for a second, dropping his chin towards his chest a bit. Not shame, Klaus Wulfenbach didn't do shame, but maybe a twinge of regret, at the very least. It was, oddly, almost enough for Gil. Maybe more than. He'd never not loved his father. And if the Empire taught you anything, it was not to blame people too much for choices made in slavery. Desperation drove many things. Gil had first hand experience of that.
Before he could mention any of that, though, before he could offer his father an olive branch, someone else intervened.
Zeetha moved towards them, a strange, careful hesitance in her steps, enough that both Agatha and Higgs trailed after her worriedly, Tarvek a little ways behind them. She stopped about at about equal distance between Gil and Klaus, her eyes tracking between them. Gil blinked, shifting towards her. She looked ... strange. Worried? Hopeful? Some mix of both, perhaps. She looked like there was something she was afraid to think too hard, but she wanted it too much not to.
"... Chump," she said at last, looking straight at Gil's father. "You are Chump, consort of my mother Queen Zantabraxus of Skifander. Aren't you."
Her eyes were wide, her whole body canted towards Gil's father, and there was a thread of something almost desperate in her voice. Gil, who's heart had traitorously stuttered even as she said it, half-remembered details about her father the foreigner and shared Skifandrian mental techniques already having sketched a half-hopeful hypothesis in the back of his mind, understood why. They stilled, the both of them, looking at Klaus with a kind of trembling anticipation, and he seemed to almost freeze in the face of them. He looked between them, Gil on the one side caught between anger, remorse and hope, Zeetha on the other, earnest and intense, and something wild and full of pain passed across his features.
"Your mother," he murmured, shaking his head. "Of course she is. Of course it would be her daughter she sent." He curled his hands into loose, careful fists, and moved a little towards Gil. Slow, almost drifting, and bizarrely defensive. "And what did your mother tell you about her consort, Highness?"
Zeetha blinked, startled hurt visibly flickering through her, and looked at the way Gil's father had moved defensively between her and ... and her brother? Gil twitched, the thought running like a live wire through him, a strange, painful idea beginning to take shape in his mind.
He'd never known his mother. He'd tried to imagine her many times, but something had always seemed to falter inside him before he really managed it. Von Pinn had been mother enough, or so he'd told himself, and once he'd found out who his father was it had more or less taken precedence over almost everything. At least until Agatha, anyway. But he'd never stopped ... he'd never stopped wondering.
And now, he was wondering if he wanted to know after all. If his father thought returning to her lands would be death for him. If his father warned him that her emissaries might be sent to kill him, and moved protectively between him and ... and his sister, his father's own daughter.
Did he want to know the truth behind that? Did he want to know why his father seemed to fear that Gil's mother might want him dead?
Yes. Actually, yes. Anger seeped through him, familiar after three years, cold and strengthening in the face of betrayal once again. Gil looked at his father's shoulder in front of him, at his sister's hurt, desperate face beyond it, and felt something not unlike a calm curiosity steal across him.
After a second, Zeetha straightened too. Not calm, not anger, but determination, Gil thought. Proud, confused determination, steady in the face of his father's suspicion. She looked Klaus straight in the eye, and answered clearly and confidently.
"She told me he was a foreigner," she said, watching them carefully. "A barbarian warrior, one of the fiercest she'd ever seen. A man of great pride and virility." She smiled a little, and Gil muffled a snort. Thank you, he thought wryly. Thanks for that image. "She said that he had stayed long enough to gift her with a strong daughter, but that he had been forced to leave again not long afterwards. Responsibility had called him away, to care for people in his own lands."
Klaus flinched. Gil watched him, watched the judder run through him, and saw Zeetha catch it as well. He saw some fragment of realisation dawn on his sister's face.
"Responsibility," Klaus repeated. Soft, contemplative. And sad. "Yes. Not to people I had left behind, though. Or not when I left. I didn't know then what had happened in my absence. But I left out of responsibility, yes. To a child I was told would not survive in his mother's lands. A child who would not be allowed to survive. To take care of him, out of responsibility to him, I was indeed forced to leave."
Zeetha stared at him, something deep and shocked in her eyes. She shook her head, glancing at Gil again over his father's shoulder, looking back at her father in turn.
"You thought my mother would let someone hurt him?" she asked, denial strong in her voice. "You thought she would let someone harm her family?"
"I thought," Klaus interrupted, almost gently, "that she might not have a choice, not without damaging her own standing or the security of her people. I thought that it might put her in danger to defy so longstanding a belief, risk dividing her people around her." He shook his head, a wealth of bitter experience in his voice. "A ruler does not always get to choose the love of their family over the security of their people. It would have cost her to protect us. Worse, it might have cost her kingdom. Her people. I had a way to avoid that. It wasn't ... It was not what I had hoped for, but I thought it would spare us both, and allow both our children their fairest chance. I thought it would keep all of us safe, or at the very least alive."
~A ruler doesn't always get to choose his family over his people.~
Gil groped behind him blindly. Looking for a wall, a bench, anything. Something to hold him up, something to help him. He breathed carefully, shallowly. He could hear the conviction in his father's voice. He could hear the strength of his belief, and he knew the truth of it. He had a memory of another presence in his head to remind how much his father believed that.
Zeetha, it seemed, had a simpler concern. A much more elemental upset, coursing through her with all the strength of a warrior's passion. She looked at her father, standing protectively in front of her brother, and it was a very simple sort of hurt that filled the question she asked.
"You think she sent me here. You think I'm supposed to hurt him. He's my brother. If you're my father, that makes him my brother. Did you really think I'd hurt him?"
Klaus growled, a rush of frustration and ... and something else seeming to run through him. He twitched forward, half a step towards Zeetha, one hand darting upwards in aimless frustration.
"We don't always get a choice," he managed, and his voice cracked suddenly out from under him. Something else, something else. Not Zeetha at all. Gil heard it. He knew what it was. He knew why. Klaus shook his head, a rumble of pure and desperate frustration in his chest, and abruptly Zeetha snapped. She darted forward, ignoring the hands her father had half-raised instinctively against her, and hit his chest at a run, her arms wrapping desperately around him.
Klaus staggered backwards, too weak still to catch himself properly, and Gil found himself darting forward in the same breath. He found his arms wrapping automatically around his father from behind even as his sister's wrapped around him from the front, and he braced all three of them against the fall. He caught them. He wasn't completely sure how. And then he held them, held tight and desperate and instinctive, and wasn't completely sure why.
But he didn't let go. He couldn't. He couldn't even think it.
"My name is Zeetha, daughter of Chump," Zeetha whispered fiercely, her arms tight around their father's chest. "I am kolee to Agatha Heterodyne, and sister to Gilgamesh Wulfenbach who is her consort. I chose them willingly, and will defend them with all my strength. And I will defend my father, even though he's an idiot who thought I'd hurt my brother!"
"That isn't--" Klaus said, his voice choked and his hands hovering over his daughter's back. "There's at least three factions in that alone. That isn't--"
"For heaven's sake, father, shut up," Gil whispered, finding his voice at last, feeling Zeetha wind happy fingers in his shirtfront for hearing it. "We'll fix it. We'll figure it out. Agatha is helping. We're allies, we're on the same side, not everyone is out to get us. So shut up and hug my sister, because I don't want to fight you, and I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want to lose you again."
The breath left his father in a rush. Gil felt it, felt his father's body slump in his arms and curl around the other body in front of him. Klaus crumpled around Zeetha, leaned helplessly backwards into Gil's arms, and Gil realised with a dull, distant shock that he was feeling Klaus Wulfenbach surrender. He was feeling his father give in. He'd ... he'd made him give in. No-one else, no other force in all the world, had ever made that happen. His father had fought at every turn, had defied war and death and slavery with nothing save pure, willful determination, always resisting, always fighting, sacrificing everything even up to his family in the cause, but Gil ...
Gil had made him surrender. Just now. Just with a sentence. Because his father had heard him, and his father had given in.
It was ... it was horrifying. It was backwards, and wrong, and terrifying. Nothing could stop his father. Nothing could make him give in. Klaus had planted a shadow of himself inside Gil, had left his own body in stasis and possessed his own son in order to fight on, to defy what had been done to him. Klaus didn't give in, and not to Gil, never to Gil, Klaus had overwritten Gil rather than surrender. But his father was tired now. And sorry. And old, Gil had never thought of him as old, but then he'd never ...
His father was always supposed to be there. Stronger than anything, able to stand up to everything. He was supposed to come back, and cheat death, and cheat the Other, and even if Gil had to fight him, even if he was Gil's enemy sometimes and threatened so much that Gil loved, he was still supposed to be there. He wasn't supposed to lose, he wasn't supposed to be old or tired or weak. Gil wasn't supposed to be stronger than him, because if Gil was stronger than him then Gil was stronger than anybody, anybody except maybe Agatha, and that meant it was all on him. That meant it was Gil's responsibility. The Empire. The Other. All of it.
And Klaus. His father. He was Gil's responsibility too. The man who'd hurt him, and brainwashed him, and left him alone to keep an Empire together. The man who'd raised him, the man who'd protected him even if it meant abandoning him. The man who'd left his wife and his daughter behind, everything he'd hoped for, and come back to a world at war to keep Gil safe.
The man who was holding the daughter he'd never thought he'd see again, the daughter he'd been willing to fight for Gil's sake, and leaning back into Gil's arms like all the strength had run out of him.
Gil's responsibility. His to take care of. His to keep safe. Both of them. All of them. Because he loved them, and that was what responsibility meant.
"... I wish you'd warned me," he whispered, burying his head in his father's shoulder. "I don't want to be the Baron. I don't want to be the strong one. It hurts."
Klaus laughed, a hitching snort of pained amusement, and managed to get his feet back under him. Stood up, took his weight off Gil for a moment, in order to ... to let go of Zeetha a little, to reach around and grab Gil's arm, to tug Gil in front of him where Klaus could hug him as well. Gil stumbled, bewildered by the gesture, and Zeetha grabbed him as well, pulled him in to nestle against their father's chest with her. His sister. His father. Gil felt his knees tremble, and let them catch him and keep him safe between them. Just for a second.
"I wanted you to be strong enough to manage it," Klaus murmured, holding them close against him. "I knew Zan would keep your sister safe. I knew she'd make her strong enough to rule a kingdom, to face anything. I promised her I'd do the same with you. It ... it should have only been a barony. It should have been just Wulfenbach. But then, when we came back ..."
When they came back, there'd been nothing left. And they'd been strong enough to do something about it. And there'd been too many people hurting not to try.
"You needed to be strong," his father said. "I knew I'd have to abandon you. To lie to you. When the Empire was established, when I realised what it meant, I knew that ... that someday I might have to betray you. To trade you for it, the way Zantabraxus had to trade me, us. I wanted you to be strong enough to survive that. To survive me. I didn't know the Other would return. I didn't know what Lucrezia would do to us. But I was always afraid I'd have to hurt you regardless. I wanted ... I wanted to believe that no matter what I had to do, you would always be strong enough to survive it. And because of that I ..."
"I know," Gil said, ducking his head into his father's shoulder, wanting to cut him off, wanting him not to say it. Not to remind them both, remind them all. "I get it. And I don't ... I always understood. I didn't like it, but I always understood. I never hated you. I just ... didn't always like you very much."
His father chuckled breathlessly, his hand reaching up to cradle the back of Gil's head, holding it safe against his shoulder. "I can live with that," he said softly, an equal forgiveness maybe. "I could have lived with your hatred, too. Just so long as you lived."
"... You know, I never thought I'd say this," Agatha said, and Gil almost jolted out of his father's arms in shock. He'd almost ... he almost forgotten she was there. He turned to her, met Zeetha's bemused gaze in passing, and found her standing behind them looking up at Gil's father, the oddest, gentlest expression on her face. "It's not the sort of thing one thinks needs saying, especially not to you. But did you ever think, Herr Baron, that maybe your goals aren't high enough?"
They blinked at her, all three of them, and she smiled abruptly, big and bright and more than a little sparky, leaning towards them so intently that Gil felt his father instinctively lean away a little bit.
"I'm not sure I understand your reasoning," Klaus answered her, raising an eyebrow in bemused and perhaps sarcastic wariness. "Are ruling Europa, defeating the Other and saving my family not lofty enough for you?"
Agatha shook her head, grinning darkly, and oh, she really was a Heterodyne, wasn't she? The strongest, sparkiest Heterodyne in years. She leaned forward, peering up into the Baron's face, and Gil found himself staring at her from very close indeed, that same bright distant awe inside him that she'd always called from him.
"That's what makes it hard to think it about you," Agatha agreed, nodding seriously. "You don't do anything by halves, Herr Baron, and everyone is too awed and scared of you to wonder if that's always true. To wonder if maybe there are things you don't let yourself have, because you're afraid to want them, and that means you don't fight for them the way you should."
Zeetha started grinning. Gil was staring at Agatha, and his father was perhaps in some mild form of shock, but Zeetha started grinning. Maybe she knew something Gil didn't. Or maybe she just knew her zumil better.
"It's not enough to want them to live," Agatha said, the manic light of conviction in her eyes. "You know what? It's not enough. If you're the despotic tyrant of a continent and you still have to choose between the things you love, you're not doing it right! Have it all! Have your family, have your wife, have your Empire, have your enemies on their knees in front of you! Fight for it, for all of it. Fight to ... to have happiness, to have love, to have your people safe. To have a home and a family. You're strong enough! We're strong enough. All of us. You, and me, and Gil, and Tarvek, and Zeetha, we're all strong. We could be strong together. We could make it safe, so we could have everyone. If you just stopped being afraid, being paranoid, if you let us work with you, we could do it. There would be nobody in the world strong enough to stop us, if you would just be willing to fight for it!"
She was shouting by the end of it, standing on her toes in front of them, alive and furious and vibrating with desperate energy. Gil could almost see her Spark, he thought distantly, he could almost see the raw, incredible strength of her in front of him, pouring out at him. He could see Tarvek behind her, looking at her the same way. She was ... she was incredible. She was beyond that. She was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.
"You have to stop being afraid," Agatha said, and she reached out to touch his father's cheek. There was a little tremor through her confidence as she did so, something that might have been embarrassment, but she bore through it, held the Baron captive despite it. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to hurt Gil, or Zeetha, or anyone you love. I'm going to help them. I'm going to destroy everyone who threatens them, my mother very much included. I love them too. I love them so much. And I'm going to fight for them. To have them, to love them, to keep them safe. I wish ... I wish you'd help me. I want to help you."
"Zumil!" Zeetha exclaimed, snapping out a hand to grab Agatha's, to hold on and grin at her in giddy, breathless delight.
Gil, though, just stared. His father too. The pair of them, stupefied, simply breathless. Gil looked up, looked at his father's face, and he saw ... he saw hope. He saw something that wanted so badly to trust, to be able to, to be allowed. His father had trusted the other Heterodynes, Gil remembered. His father had been their friend, had fought beside them, had mourned for them. His father had protected their people. He wanted to trust Agatha. Gil could see how much he wanted that.
But she was right, he realised. She'd been right from the start. His father was afraid. Of her, of wanting to trust her, of having her use that want as her mother had used it. Afraid of being betrayed, afraid of watching his family and his people be destroyed because of it. He was afraid to let himself risk it, because to risk it would be to surrender, and that of all things his father had never ... never done ...
Until now. Until today. Until Gil.
Oh. Oh please. Please let this work. Gil wanted it. He wanted it all, he wanted everything. He wanted Agatha and his father both, he wanted his sister and his mother, he wanted not to have to choose between them, he wanted to keep them all. He wanted it so badly, and Agatha was right. They were strong, they were strong enough, and they could fight for it. They could make it work. Please.
"Father," he said, very quietly. Klaus looked down at him, a slow roll of his head that looked almost automatic, and Gil stared into the eyes of a man he'd never thought could be weak, and who he desperately wanted to be brave. "She's right. You know she's right. We could do it, father. We can go to Skifander, and we can figure out how to stop this, and we can do it together. All of us. I want to. I want that. I ... I don't want to lose any of you again."
And there was ... there was a flicker. In his father's eyes. There was a tremor, and a change, and something moved. Something shifted, became different, and Gil felt hope so strong it almost hurt. He saw something change in his father, and felt sick with how much he needed it to be what he hoped.
"... They'll try to kill you," Klaus said softly. Looking at him, holding his daughter at his side, with Agatha leaning close. "If you go there, even if your mother would fight for you, there will still be those who try to kill you."
Gil grinned. He couldn't help it. He bared his teeth, and it was not at all happy, maybe, but it was triumphant. It was rich and proud and full of all the defiance in the world.
"Then you'll stop them," he said. "Or I will. Or Zeetha will. Or Agatha. My mother, even. No matter what happens, one of us will stop it. We'll win. We'll fight until we win, and we won't give up, and we'll make them stop." He knotted his hand in the back of his father's shirt, holding tight, and let every last ounce of his faith bleed forward. He had three years of anger and pain and strength to build from. He had all the strength in the world, as much as any of them and more. "Father. We can do this. Let us try. This once, let us try."
And this time, this surrender, wasn't horrifying. It wasn't wrong. It was trust, it was hope, it was good and right and perfect, and when Klaus finally nodded his head, finally gave in this one more time, Gil wrapped his arms around him, hugged him close to breaking point, and all but cried in happiness. He didn't even care. Not for dignity, not for any of it. He grabbed his father and his sister, felt Agatha grab hold of him in turn, and held them while he cried.
Let Lucrezia fight them now. Let the Other come for them, let Skifander come for them, let the whole damn world take issue with them now. They'd beat them. They'd beat all of them. Just watch. While it was them, while it was his family all together, there was no goal too high, and no force in the world strong enough to take them down.
From this point onwards, not one.
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