Never had you expected your betrayal to come back and bite you as you stared at Brant, eyes locked as both of you held each other in a trance of deep remembrance. Here you stood, expensive dress torn and tattered as you finally stood on your feet in the Fool’s Elysium.

You had once been a noble, but after refusing the arranged marriage your father set up for you, you had been deemed ‘faithless,’ and therefore cast away by the Church, now as a Fool. Just as Brant had been all those years ago. All those years ago you watched them take him away while you kept silent.

You had spent years suppressing the guilt but now it was all coming back to you as you explored the hurt in Brant’s purple eyes. They looked the same as the day you had abandoned him, and his pleads for your help came back to your ears; screams you thought had faded, only now they were as prominent as when they had first pierced your ears, but now your ears were the only ones that heard them.

“Looks like even you aren’t safe from the Church’s mandate.”

He finally spoke, his initial shock now discarded as he held about his confident air. Except now, with the smugness also came the solemn undertone of knowing, of the acknowledgment that both of you at this moment were remembering the events of so long ago. He wasn’t only putting on teasing front, he was making a point.