Notes: This! is very VERY late! A year and 10ish months, which is classic but still horrible (like Chanel No5, if y'all have ever had the misfortune to smell that). But it's here, and though it's a little embarrassing, this is the longest thing I've ever managed to finish, so I'm trying to feel proud! I really missed writing and really missed JatD. It looks scary inactive out here recently, so I hope the fandom is just hibernating and not actually dead — but even if it is, I already wrote the damn thing, so I'm posting it anyways.

(I'd stick a bunch of hearts in these notes but I know from experience the sideways carrot portion is forbidden around here. Crossposted to Ao3 finally because this site apparently can't handle love. And also doesn't let you post its name, which I learned just now when that disappeared. Some p sick censorship levels, when you even censor yourself.)

Anyways — to be yelled into the void about weekly for the next five chapters. If you're out there, pls yell back!

Chapter I.

A Beginning.

I.

It's the same nightmare he's had before.

He's kneeling on the stone — of the chapel, of the throne room, of the steps to Jane's tower, of all of them at once.

He sees her hair hanging wild down to her knees. He doesn't dare raise his head any higher. The sword is cold on his shoulder. He can feel the chilled metal so close to his neck, and his pounding pulse.

Should I? she whispers.

This thing is nothing like Jane, and is more Jane than Jane herself has ever been. He knows it's not really her because he's afraid, feels it sharp beneath his chilled knees, threading thick through his breathless throat.

The thing that is Jane that isn't Jane waits for an answer. The metal could tap over to the other shoulder or bite into his neck, and in real life the king will decide whether or not to knight him, but in the dream it's always Jane.

Should I, she wonders again, and then he wakes up.

II.

Gunther eavesdropped all the time, and he always had.

Sometimes it was a precautionary measure. Sir Theodore, over the years, had almost bumped into a hundred and one reasons to rescind Gunther's apprenticeship, and Gunther had saved his skin by knowing about many of them ahead of time. He eavesdropped on the king too — very carefully, of course. (Though the king only rarely mentioned Gunther — which was somewhat disappointing, honestly, but was better than complaints. A king's complaints went further than anyone's).

Sometimes it was less precaution than ego. He liked knowing what people were saying about him. In a selfish, strange sort of way, it reminded him of his own existence, even when it was bad. (Certainly Gunther would rather be loved. Love stretched further than hate, gave more willingly. But hatred was a powerful thing still, and fear; fear even more so.)

Sometimes the listening was useless, or would seem so to most anyone else. But he listened anyways — because it was a habit, and one he was good at, and he liked doing things he was good at — and because he liked knowing. His father had said knowing was half of having once, and though Gunther knew having was the best of all, often just the knowing felt good enough. Sometimes there was a quiet feeling in his head of needing to do more, know more, be ready, and though he couldn't ever figure what exactly he needed to be ready for, damned if he was going to be caught unawares. He'd know exactly what he needed to know to keep himself safe, since no one else was going to bother. (His father had said once, leaning over thick fingers pressed against the desk in his study, towering over Gunther in size and personality and presence — it is us Breeches against the world, Gunther, never forget that.)

(Us Breeches against each other against the world, Gunther had amended in his head, even as he nodded.)

Often he forgot his eavesdropped conversations, providing they weren't useful. But there were a few he remembered oddly well. He had been fourteen for this one, maybe. (He figured that age because they'd been learning staves that day, and he and Jane had fought with more than just the padded weapons, his tongue still lightning hot with insults said and unsaid. They had learned how to hide those conversations more among pleasantries as they grew older under Sir Theodore's ever watchful eye.) He'd rounded the corner of the upper battlements, wiping dirty sweat from his forehead, and paused at the voices above him.

"Jane," Dragon was saying, "if Jingleboy and Sir Rustylegs were both dangling off the side of the cliff, and you could only grab one—"

"Ugh, Dragon. Not all of the princess's games are nice enough to repeat — and you know how I feel about this one." Jane had a tired sort of tone that she seldom used with Gunther. (He had no leeway in the progression of engaged to tired to irritated Jane; it usually went straight to irritated.) Despite her comparative emotional generosity with Dragon, there was still some potential she might get cross with him — a rare sight that Gunther found to be sort of satisfying on a petty, lonely level. He had pulled back into the corner below Jane's tower to listen.

"But why?" Dragon asked, not challenging, only confused and curious.

Jane gave an overloud sigh. "Because it is not about saving, it is about choosing."

"Are the choices really so hard? Then what about an easy one — the prince or princess. One you hate and one you love."

The conversation had turned very quickly to treason, which made it vastly more interesting to Gunther, who pressed back closer against the wall, quieting his exhales.

But of course Jane handily quashed the fun before it could even get started. Her voice turned high and shocked. "Dragon!"

"What? How is that not easy? I can tell you how nearly everyone in the castle would answer, if you need a hint."

"Dragon," she said in a much lower hiss, so that Gunther had to catch his breath to hear, "that is not easy. One of them is the crown prince, whom I have sworn my life to protect, and the other is someone who trusts me with her whole heart, to whom I have sworn the same, and both of them are children."

"Oh. Yes. Hmm." Dragon paused a bit sheepishly. "Well I can see where that gets difficult then. But it is not as if I am asking you to choose between your mother and father, it is only a bit of fun. What about if it was Gunther and—"

Jane interrupted the next bit, which Gunther had been very eager to hear. "Dragon, I just do not like choosing games like this. It would never happen in real life, and even if you choose one, who can know what you would really do, faced with such an awful decision?"

"I know."

Jane paused, sounding amused despite herself. "Well, O Great and Wise Dragon? What would you do?"

"Save both. See when you have wings and arms — or legs, in my case—"

Jane laughed. "Cheat! I told you it is hard." Her voice then grew a wicked hint of tease, and Gunther noticed, wishing he hadn't, that it was a different, kinder sort of teasing than she used with him. "Alright, and if you had to choose between saving several people with your great many limbs or saving only one very crucial person, what then?"

"Is the person you? If it is, everyone else had better hope they learn to fly before they reach the bottom of the cliff—"

Jane had protested amongst smothered giggles, punctuated at the end with a snort. Gunther had drifted away, unable to keep a frown from his face.

He knew choosing was not something Jane was fond of. In the choice between her gender and her goals, she had chosen both; in the choice between her squirehood and Dragon, she had again chosen both. She had thrown her own dance instead of choosing between wearing a dress and not attending one at all. The list went on and on — and she wriggled out time and time again.

This was perhaps Gunther's least favorite of Jane's traits. Choices never worked out this way for him. There were always two, and one was awful, and the other usually was also awful, only in a slightly different way.

And maybe this was why he remembered this conversation strangely well amongst all that he'd heard. Gunther continued to think of it as the years passed without really understanding why. Dragon and Jane speaking with that lilting warmth, the parry back and forth of their conversation that so rarely turned sharp like his and Jane's, and Jane saying I do not like choosing in almost as many words, as if it were the sort of thing anyone had the luxury to dislike.

III.

And at some point Gunther was eighteen, almost nineteen, almost knighted — and he still listened in on people, because it was a habit, and it was a precaution — and he was good at it.

He was leaning back against the wood wall of the knight's quarters where the structure met the castle stone ("Do you think Gunther moved in with the knights early because he was lonely in that great big house alone?" Pepper had asked Smithy a month ago, and Smithy had shrugged, and Gunther hearing from the wall above them had flinched). Between the sounds of metal and forge and shouting from beyond the stables, coming from the prince or princess or both, he heard the quiet murmur of Jane's voice.

It cut through everything. The sound of Jane trying, for once, to be quiet. (Or he'd always felt it had, but sometimes he wondered if that was only because he listened so much harder when it was Jane, and especially when it was Jane keeping secrets — and that made his heart burn with something that was embarrassment, or was thoughts he kept unthought for his own self-preservation.)

She wasn't quite whispering, but she very nearly was, Dragon's voice a low rumble beside hers. Of course it was Dragon she spoke with. Even now, they were inseparable. Jane would be knighted later than Gunther, for a little less than a year ago she and Dragon had left to search for something or other that had seemed so incredibly promising, that would surely lead them to any remaining dragons, and even if it took months wouldn't the king like to know if there was anything else as powerful as Dragon out there, any more of those lovely dragon swords—

(Jane was a fraud. She scammed the lot of them as much as his father ever had, but her scam was hope. She glowed with it, and believers fell before her like rain.)

They had come back with nothing to show for it. Apparently Gunther was the only one unsurprised by this. Jane had been gone for two seasons, and only now was she even starting to catch up to the training she'd missed.

And though Dragon had returned somehow quieter, less boisterous, still the two of them talked incessantly, and about everything. There was no guarantee they ever had anything interesting to say, but still Gunther tipped his head back against the wood and listened anyways. Because it was what he did, and because it was Jane. Because her voice was catching on the edges of her words, rounding their corners soft and unsure and unhappy.

"—seems different, does he not — not that I am worried… well, a little," she corrected, as if Dragon had given her a look. "Pepper says he never speaks to any of them anymore, and you have seen how—"

From the next yard over, the princess let loose an enraged scream (she was ten now and supposedly old enough to be acting proper, but the prince remained as he ever had, and siblings were siblings, royal or not), drowning out a few moments of Jane's conversation.

"—the oddest patrols and always alone, and since when have we needed almost-knights to deliver messages to the outer villages—"

"Perhaps if you asked him instead of me, since I have no idea what goes on in his head—"

"But I have tried, Dragon, and he tells me nothing."

"If he tells you nothing, he wants to tell you nothing. I know it is difficult, Jane, but perhaps you should leave well enough alone."

Jane's silence sounded reluctant. Gunther thought the phrase 'leave well enough alone' was barely in her vocabulary.

"Give him time. And space."

Again Jane was silent. Then, "It must be so hard," with such feeling, swelling wider and louder than the few soft words.

Gunther closed his eyes and swallowed. So hard. Nothing was too hard for Jane.

There was a clatter of boots, and then the rush of wings. They were off, heavy wingbeats soaring up towards the clouds, but still Jane's voice echoed in his head, as solid as the stone wall beside him.

IV.

"I was about to take a walk. Care to join?"

Gunther looked up. Jane was standing in front of him, her hands on her hips and fisting a little into her tunic, belying her casual tone.

Gunther didn't stand. He looked back at the dagger he was polishing. "Where to?"

"Out." Jane threw a hand towards the forest. "You know."

"I really do not."

She huffed out a breath. "To check the woodland paths. I heard the northerly ones were damaged by the snow melt this year, so I thought I would take a look."

He raised his eyebrows. "On foot?"

She was quiet for a moment, and he looked up again, sure she was wrangling back an annoyed expression. Instead she was staring at her feet, her brows caught up together, curled around some worry. One hand left her hip to pinch long one of her orange curls. She tucked the strands back behind an ear when she saw his eyes on her. "Yes. On foot. The day is nice enough."

Nice enough was ungenerous. It was the warmest day of the year so far. Summer had truly arrived. He stood, stretching and sticking the dagger back in his boot.

"Good," Jane said, turning towards the forest. Though she hid it well, he could still hear the relief in her voice. She would grow tired of inviting him along soon if he kept refusing. The idea sounded not wholly unappealing, and for a moment he stood still while she headed into the trees, wondering if perhaps he'd rather head the exact opposite direction. But then she waved a hand at him, and there was something almost comforting in the annoyed way she tossed back, "Well? Coming?"

He followed along behind. The trail was too thin for two, or so he told himself. Really he'd rather not give Jane ample opportunity for eye contact. Best not make it even easier for her to accomplish whatever she intended by this.

"I was thinking," she started over her shoulder, "of offering to deliver the trade agreement for the king."

He should have known she wouldn't delay even a moment. "Were you now."

"Yes. I have never been to Loefbury."

He snorted. "What is there in Loefbury anyways?"

"A trade agreement. Or there will be by this time next week."

He almost didn't want to answer, but he'd followed her already, and if not for this, then why? "Really. You think the king would send his greatest asset for something so menial?"

Jane stopped and he almost slammed into her back. "Greatest asset?"

"I meant Dragon."

"Oh." She started forward again. "No, he would not come. A little threatening for a goodwill mission."

"I am surprised you would request anything that would require you to be away from him."

"Oh, pish. I am practically knighted, it is not as if he is some nursemaid I still cling to. Besides, this trip cannot be too menial if you deliver to the northern villages all the time. Has the king ever denied you any of those?"

Gunther scowled. That was different.

"And do not say that is different, because honestly—" she ducked beneath a low branch but caught her hair on its hooked twigs, which pulled it just far enough forward that when she jerked away the branch promptly thwacked back into Gunther's face.

Jane gasped and laughed in the same breath. "Oh sorry, I did not even—" she pulled a leaf from by his ear and laughed again. "You have a pink line on your cheek. Ow. Sorry." Her fingertip hovered as if she would maybe brush his stinging skin, and he watched it, and her, for a very long moment before she cleared her throat and fisted her hand at her side. "Would you want to come?"

"To Loefbury?"

She nodded.

He shrugged.

She kept walking. "Could be fun."

It really couldn't. It had little chance to be anything but boring. But perhaps he didn't really believe that — perhaps any trip with Jane had to be at least something. He pictured, out of nowhere, a dream he'd had recently. Jane had been reclined on a stone, unbound hair down to her waist, clad in a gold and green tunic. She hadn't been wearing much more than the tunic, and she'd been smiling, and reached a hand up to him — and then he'd realized the rock she laid upon was a gravestone.

He blinked away the dream, just as he'd shuddered awake from it a few weeks before. Jane glanced back at him, and he glanced away. They walked in silence for a few minutes. He was trying not to think of the curve of her neck when she went without armor, how it would be possible to trace the edge of her collarbones through the fine linen. He was trying not to think of her white as a bone laid out on a slab, her fingers char black, her lips coughed bloody.

She spoke again and he almost winced, pulled from his reverie.

"I heard you gave the outlying farms back to their tenants."

The path had room for two now. She was keeping pace with him. Her hand brushed his, and his twitched, but she was only swiping away a spiderweb, looking over at him. "And all the village pastures too."

"The agreements were all ash. What kind of claim did I hold without those?"

Jane's eyes narrowed. "A legal one. A burnt deed hardly reverts back a sale."

He turned his gaze to the uneven path ahead. "They belonged to the king anyways. My father was only managing them."

It was mostly true. They did belong to the king, for it was his kingdom, his land, his citizens — but Magnus had controlled the property and thus controlled its people, paper and coin and toil.

Jane sped up to match his stride. "Do not misunderstand me, I think you did the right thing — but you could have managed them just the same. Why give them up?"

"Because I have no idea how to run a business, Jane," he snapped, which was not at all true. He knew how Magnus had run it, and how he had expected Gunther to run it one day, and thus he knew exactly how not to run a business. "How could I keep track of so many properties?"

"Your father did."

He stopped. Jane, a step behind, kept walking. She crashed into his back and he stumbled forward, prevented from falling only by her quick hand, which caught his wrist and yanked him to his feet, right back into her. Her fingers wrapped around his forearms, stabilizing the both of them, and she laughed, eyes alight. "See, the path is rough!"

"You ran into me! The path has nothing to do with it!"

She kept laughing. For a moment he was caught up in it, her smile, the way the sound crackled through the air, how even the trees' shade couldn't dull her hair. Her thumbs pressed warm against his skin.

He shifted back. It was slight, but he felt it ripple through the space between them, the way her arms fell before she folded them against her chest. "Sorry," she said. And then, softer, "Sorry."

She wasn't just apologizing for smacking into him. He started walking again without even really meaning to, past her this time, back towards the castle. She didn't have to keep saying it, he thought, but said nothing.

She was quiet behind him. After a few moments, he heard her feet clack quick over the hard dirt, and then she was back at his side. For a couple minutes they walked together, and he had the impossible and contradictory wishes that it would be over already so he could leave her behind, and that the path would never end and they could walk forever.

"You have barely been rude since I have been back," Jane remarked when the canopy began to thin.

"Shall I start now?" he answered almost acidly.

She made as if to elbow him, but paused instead. They had reached the end of the trees.

"I should go," she said, sounding as if she wanted to and just needed the excuse of the word 'should'.

"Then go," he said. "Some of us have useful things to do."

She stared at him. It was strange and terrible for a second, her eyes sifting through him both gently and implacably, but it seemed important somehow that he hold her gaze. I feel fine, he thought at her forcefully, though the silent echo sounded desperate to his own ears. Really. Fine.

She turned. The sun bounced brightly off her curls, off her freckled skin. "Think about Loefbury, alright? And come to breakfast tomorrow," she said, her tone already admonishing because they both knew he wouldn't.

He said nothing, but she looked back at him over her shoulder anyways. This time he couldn't meet her eyes. Sometimes it was too obvious and too unspoken, what had happened, and how he had changed — and that she had noticed. Sometimes Jane noticing was the only thing that made it real.