Don't make promises you can't keep. I wish someone had told me that. In truth, I wish someone had told me a lot of things. But wishing is for people who have money with which to bribe the fates, and gold with which to pave the roads to their dreams.

If you can find a way to get a school built for these kids, Viktor… I'll teach the classes.

We sealed the promise with the clink of glass, and bittersweet sips of Niedergranzreich white wine. Grass under our feet, stars overhead; the tangled, beautiful, ugly kingdom spread before us. The good, and the bad, the rich and the poor — a noble-born dreamer, and an illiterate gutter child.

Guess which one I was.

Despite our close ties, we were undeniably from two different worlds. Our staggering difference in rank constantly pushed us apart. It just made our friendship all the stronger. After all, he was the one who followed me down into the sewers, and discovered what was underneath the surface of the fairytale kingdom of Glanzreich. Orphans. They lived down there, and I was just one of many but somehow ended up being a parent for most of them. I remembered thinking he looked like he'd walked out of a book and managed to get lost along the way… not that I could read. He stumbled into the sewer, and my life: blonde hair, delicate limbs, spotless, shimmering white gloves. His name was Viktor.

Those gloves didn't stay white for long. He wanted to know more, wanted to help, wanted to help almost too much at times. Getting orphans off the streets. Finding food. Running errands for a few kreuzer, every coin going to the children under my care. He didn't need the money. What an understatement.

He was driven; he wanted to change things, and make a difference. His foolish, starry-eyed dreaming rubbed off on me. Sometimes I laughed at what he said. He was almost too pure. He'd drown, held under by the weight of everything wrong with this place. But I wanted things to be different, too. I wanted to learn how to read. I wanted things to change.

Change they did. The events of the past earned me a criminal record, and earned Viktor some ugly scars. I was hit over the head with the truth — who Viktor truly was. And I had been truly blind.

I had to follow my own path after that. Viktor had new responsibilities, and I was going to make a new start, with more emotional baggage stowed away than I knew what to do with. We made our promise, sealed by starlight and the clink of glass.

Viktor would get a church built — a shelter — for orphans throughout the kingdom. I, who was illiterate and without a cent to my name, would educate myself; get a teaching license, and teach the orphans at the church.

I think we must have had too much that night. Because looking back, we must have been out of our minds.

Young and foolish. The last chance we had to be so, together.

I traded my knives for books. The years passed by, marked by letters from Viktor, measured in things learned. My vision started blurring; I had to get glasses. Things started changing in the kingdom, in increments outside my window. Time ticked by on a golden pocket watch, one that was not my own. I didn't attend university. I could have got in, if I had let Viktor and his connections help me get in. But I refused. What's the point in changing if you're going to put up a facade to hide the half-finished mess? I always did things my own way; I wasn't going to change now.

It was only once a letter arrived from Viktor — while I was waiting to receive my license — that I felt like I had some perception of time once again. A photograph fell into my hands. It's been almost ten… years.

It was a family photograph, the black-and-white image painstakingly hand-painted with colour. The portrait was of Viktor and his wife seated with a cluster of children around them. A shock of black hair; silvery white hair; one already wearing glasses, and the smallest, with beautiful, golden hair. Yet one keeps drawing my gaze — tiny, doll-like, with expressive, blue eyes, lustrous yellow hair, and a wary expression kissed with a delicate blush. Names are inscribed on the other side. Eins, Kai, Bruno, Licht.

I feel a twinge in my chest. 'Leonhard.'

I wonder if they're like their father.

I prop the photograph up on my desk. I'm already planning my reply in my head. They're beautiful, Viktor. I'm truly happy for you. Their happiness is so golden, it feels as though it should be set with diamonds. Am I jealous? If I'm not, I feel like I should be. While recently people have been taking note of my work, the rest tell me that I should regret the years I poured into my studies, when I could have been… doing other things. They don't understand, about me, or what I'm trying to do.

Besides. I just can't see myself in a life like that. For many, many reasons.

I sift through the rest of the mail with one hand, and draw out paper and quill with the other. My fingers hit thick paper. I glance over.

I slice open the envelope. Take out the contents. Read them.

Professor Heine Wittgenstein.

I don't really take in any of the rest. I pause, allow myself a brief, flickering smile, before pulling my suitcase from beneath my bed.

Dear Viktor,

You'll have to start sending your letters to the church.

I just got my teaching license.

To be continued...

A/N: I came up with this when I realised that Heine's teaching career was effectively bookended by his meeting Viktor on one end, and coming to the palace on the other, with virtually no coverage of his time at Maria Vetsera church. Naturally, I couldn't pass the opportunity up! Reviews welcome, and thanks for reading!