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shinonBefore I decided the flash-forward bit from How this Story Ends was going to be 1) only about Flavio and 2) only depressing shit, I wrote some other small scenes that I ended up cutting, but still sorta like:
You'll fight dragons. You will return to town to find Regina puzzling over a new recipe, and some evenings you will eat dragons. Not trusting your instincts, you will look around the table for confirmation that this is in fact unusual, and kind of badass. The others will confirm.
Your first time in High Lagaard, Arianna taught Flavio to sew. After you return, she'll teach him embroidery. He'll show a real aptitude. “It's kind of relaxing,” he'll tell you. He will maintain this as a hobby for years – if “hobby” is the word, and not “nervous habit.” He'll admit at some point that it's a great way to keep himself busy at times when he'd otherwise sit around worrying.
Years in the future you will need to go on a trip without him. You will come back to discover that he's embroidered one of his jackets to hell and gone, and you will elbow him and tell him he looks fancy.
He'll look down at it like this is the first time he's noticed the gold thread along the seams, and then he'll groan and hide his face in his hands. “Goddammit,” he'll say. “Don't judge me.” When you check the drawers later, his spare clothes will be in similar condition.
You will all go to meet Arianna's son. Flavio will be paralyzed with terror in the presence of Arianna's husband, who, fancy titles notwithstanding, will still seem like a decent guy. Chloe will bring an array of mild-to-moderately inappropriate baby gifts and the kid will love all of them; by age seven he'll start to show a strange aptitude for war lore, and Arianna will ask Chloe to tutor him.
Whether as a consequence or a prerequisite for her appointment, the Gervaise family will be restored to full honor. This will be great for Chloe's parents and have no noticeable effect on Chloe herself. “Trand got really weird about it,” she will write to you in one of her occasional letters. “I'm worried.” The next paragraph of this letter will be a review of a new barbecue restaurant.
A scrap from the initial search for Fafnir:
A scrap of yellow cloth caught in the brambles. Footprints of a certain size, separated by a stride of a certain length. The signs had seemed so clear.
A yellow flower. The tracks of an animal. Grass bent over by the recent windstorm. That was all.
“Sir Flavio, how long -”
“Two months and eight days.”
“- since you slept?”
He didn't have an answer. She put an arm around his shoulders. He shook it off and staggered away.
I was asked about the initial reunion from Flavio's PoV:
In the instant his fist made contact with his best friend’s face, Flavio realized that he did not know why he was doing it. And more importantly, he did not know what next. How did you move on from this? After almost a year apart, and after shouting incoherently at the guy and socking him in the jaw, did you just, what, make eye contact like normal and ask him how he’d been? Flavio wasn’t even sure he wanted to know how he’d been. What if it was bad? What if he’d been miserable and lonely out here and way worse off than the rest of the guild and then Flavio looked like a total dick for attacking him?
After almost a year apart, how was Flavio supposed to look him in the face and act normal? Was that why he punched him? Was that why he was already walking away?
He kept walking. His hand throbbed, and after a minute or so he felt blood seeping down his fingers. Not much, though. Not enough to worry about. He snapped a leaf off a plant he recognized as he walked by, squeezed sap onto the abrasions, and discarded it without breaking stride. It stung a little. It always did. He had to keep walking or he’d start thinking about things too much, like what he was going to do when he went back, like if he was ready to forgive or be forgiven. So better keep walking. Better pretend he was never going back at all and this was all that there was, just him and the tall grass and maybe he’d never even had a best friend to lose, maybe the whole world was just him and this infinite wilderness, these hills, this stream, wouldn’t that be just fine? Wouldn’t that be so much less complicated? Wouldn’t it be better if he just lived alone outside somewhere and camped out every night and never had to worry about other people or what they thought or if they were even alive or if they had ever cared about him the way he did them or -
His hand hurt. His chest hurt. Wasn’t it supposed to be simple, when you found what you were looking for? Wasn’t it supposed to feel good?
He kept walking. Just… keep walking, he told himself, don’t think about it, don’t make this into a thing, just keep walking, he probably doesn’t hate you, it doesn’t matter if he hates you, it isn’t important that you kinda hate him, you have a job to do and that’s -
The job is done. Right. They’d finally found him. And Flavio had already ruined it. So again: now what?
He stumbled to a stop, some arbitrary place, some arbitrary distance away.
No, no. He still had a job to do. Provisions. He was in charge of provisions, so he could do that for a while and put off thinking for a little longer. He went back to the camp, couldn’t make himself say anything to Chloe or Bertrand, scooped up a bag and the empty water vessels, and kept walking. Don’t think about it. Don’t deal with it. You’ll have to deal with it when you come back with the water. Forget that. Just go. It’s something to do, for now.
He kept walking for an hour. And then he couldn’t avoid the thought anymore. He thought, If you were really out here to gather vegetables you probably would have been looking at vegetables, and you probably would’ve picked some by now, and then the strength left him and he sat down.
He got to the vegetables eventually. Eventually he went back.
I was also asked, hey what if, post-reunion, Flavio wanted advice on How to Relate to an Immortal Monster:
"He'll hate me someday," said Flavio. "Won't he? I mean, he's going to keep being cool and strong forever and I'll get old and weak and boring and die. And until I die I'm just gonna keep holding him back even more than I already do -"
"Okay, gimme that before you hurt yourself. You've definitely had enough."
"I'm serious."
"And I'm the wrong person to ask." Bertrand lifted the mug out of Flavio's unresisting fingers, squinted down at the last dregs of cider as if he considered finishing it himself, and finally put it aside. "You wanna know how to handle a relationship with some kind of badass immortal monster. Sucks for you. I've been avoiding relationships for longer than all four of you kids have been alive, combined."
"But you know something. I mean, you at least know what it's like, what it's going to be like for him, sort of -"
"- Watching young people grow up and turn decrepit overnight? Nope, still not your guy. I don't stick around for that part."
"See? See? That's it, that's the question. Is he going to feel the same? Is he going to leave? Or is he going to stick around but secretly want to leave the whole time and just, like..."
"Hell if I know. That boyfriend of yours is in a completely different league. You really shouldn't listen to me. Might get the wrong idea."
"But I can't ask anybody else. They'd just... even him! Even he would say it! People would just say, 'oh, you've got your whole life ahead of you, that's not happening yet, stop borrowing trouble,' or something, but just ignoring it doesn't make it go away! It's absolutely, definitely going to happen, and I don't know what to do."
"Well, you can't stop it, either. You're gonna get old if you don't die first. You're gonna hate it. And?"
Flavio rested his arms on the table, and then let his chin fall onto his folded hands. "I just..."
"Come on, what do you wanna hear? Life sucks and there isn't shit we can do about it. Is that the advice you're looking for?"
"I don't know."
"Well. Try asking the man himself next time. It's his business, not mine."
"I'm sorry."
"Nah, don't sweat it. If for some reason you really don't think you can ask your best friend an honest question" - he ladled the sarcasm on thick enough that even a drunk person should notice it, even if that drunk was Flavio - "I'll do my best as some sketchy-ass third party." He tapped his own mug, empty now for the third or fourth time. "As long as you're buying, anyway."
"You... really are a terrible old man."
"Isn't that what you came for?"
You'll fight dragons. You will return to town to find Regina puzzling over a new recipe, and some evenings you will eat dragons. Not trusting your instincts, you will look around the table for confirmation that this is in fact unusual, and kind of badass. The others will confirm.
Your first time in High Lagaard, Arianna taught Flavio to sew. After you return, she'll teach him embroidery. He'll show a real aptitude. “It's kind of relaxing,” he'll tell you. He will maintain this as a hobby for years – if “hobby” is the word, and not “nervous habit.” He'll admit at some point that it's a great way to keep himself busy at times when he'd otherwise sit around worrying.
Years in the future you will need to go on a trip without him. You will come back to discover that he's embroidered one of his jackets to hell and gone, and you will elbow him and tell him he looks fancy.
He'll look down at it like this is the first time he's noticed the gold thread along the seams, and then he'll groan and hide his face in his hands. “Goddammit,” he'll say. “Don't judge me.” When you check the drawers later, his spare clothes will be in similar condition.
You will all go to meet Arianna's son. Flavio will be paralyzed with terror in the presence of Arianna's husband, who, fancy titles notwithstanding, will still seem like a decent guy. Chloe will bring an array of mild-to-moderately inappropriate baby gifts and the kid will love all of them; by age seven he'll start to show a strange aptitude for war lore, and Arianna will ask Chloe to tutor him.
Whether as a consequence or a prerequisite for her appointment, the Gervaise family will be restored to full honor. This will be great for Chloe's parents and have no noticeable effect on Chloe herself. “Trand got really weird about it,” she will write to you in one of her occasional letters. “I'm worried.” The next paragraph of this letter will be a review of a new barbecue restaurant.
A scrap from the initial search for Fafnir:
A scrap of yellow cloth caught in the brambles. Footprints of a certain size, separated by a stride of a certain length. The signs had seemed so clear.
A yellow flower. The tracks of an animal. Grass bent over by the recent windstorm. That was all.
“Sir Flavio, how long -”
“Two months and eight days.”
“- since you slept?”
He didn't have an answer. She put an arm around his shoulders. He shook it off and staggered away.
I was asked about the initial reunion from Flavio's PoV:
In the instant his fist made contact with his best friend’s face, Flavio realized that he did not know why he was doing it. And more importantly, he did not know what next. How did you move on from this? After almost a year apart, and after shouting incoherently at the guy and socking him in the jaw, did you just, what, make eye contact like normal and ask him how he’d been? Flavio wasn’t even sure he wanted to know how he’d been. What if it was bad? What if he’d been miserable and lonely out here and way worse off than the rest of the guild and then Flavio looked like a total dick for attacking him?
After almost a year apart, how was Flavio supposed to look him in the face and act normal? Was that why he punched him? Was that why he was already walking away?
He kept walking. His hand throbbed, and after a minute or so he felt blood seeping down his fingers. Not much, though. Not enough to worry about. He snapped a leaf off a plant he recognized as he walked by, squeezed sap onto the abrasions, and discarded it without breaking stride. It stung a little. It always did. He had to keep walking or he’d start thinking about things too much, like what he was going to do when he went back, like if he was ready to forgive or be forgiven. So better keep walking. Better pretend he was never going back at all and this was all that there was, just him and the tall grass and maybe he’d never even had a best friend to lose, maybe the whole world was just him and this infinite wilderness, these hills, this stream, wouldn’t that be just fine? Wouldn’t that be so much less complicated? Wouldn’t it be better if he just lived alone outside somewhere and camped out every night and never had to worry about other people or what they thought or if they were even alive or if they had ever cared about him the way he did them or -
His hand hurt. His chest hurt. Wasn’t it supposed to be simple, when you found what you were looking for? Wasn’t it supposed to feel good?
He kept walking. Just… keep walking, he told himself, don’t think about it, don’t make this into a thing, just keep walking, he probably doesn’t hate you, it doesn’t matter if he hates you, it isn’t important that you kinda hate him, you have a job to do and that’s -
The job is done. Right. They’d finally found him. And Flavio had already ruined it. So again: now what?
He stumbled to a stop, some arbitrary place, some arbitrary distance away.
No, no. He still had a job to do. Provisions. He was in charge of provisions, so he could do that for a while and put off thinking for a little longer. He went back to the camp, couldn’t make himself say anything to Chloe or Bertrand, scooped up a bag and the empty water vessels, and kept walking. Don’t think about it. Don’t deal with it. You’ll have to deal with it when you come back with the water. Forget that. Just go. It’s something to do, for now.
He kept walking for an hour. And then he couldn’t avoid the thought anymore. He thought, If you were really out here to gather vegetables you probably would have been looking at vegetables, and you probably would’ve picked some by now, and then the strength left him and he sat down.
He got to the vegetables eventually. Eventually he went back.
I was also asked, hey what if, post-reunion, Flavio wanted advice on How to Relate to an Immortal Monster:
"He'll hate me someday," said Flavio. "Won't he? I mean, he's going to keep being cool and strong forever and I'll get old and weak and boring and die. And until I die I'm just gonna keep holding him back even more than I already do -"
"Okay, gimme that before you hurt yourself. You've definitely had enough."
"I'm serious."
"And I'm the wrong person to ask." Bertrand lifted the mug out of Flavio's unresisting fingers, squinted down at the last dregs of cider as if he considered finishing it himself, and finally put it aside. "You wanna know how to handle a relationship with some kind of badass immortal monster. Sucks for you. I've been avoiding relationships for longer than all four of you kids have been alive, combined."
"But you know something. I mean, you at least know what it's like, what it's going to be like for him, sort of -"
"- Watching young people grow up and turn decrepit overnight? Nope, still not your guy. I don't stick around for that part."
"See? See? That's it, that's the question. Is he going to feel the same? Is he going to leave? Or is he going to stick around but secretly want to leave the whole time and just, like..."
"Hell if I know. That boyfriend of yours is in a completely different league. You really shouldn't listen to me. Might get the wrong idea."
"But I can't ask anybody else. They'd just... even him! Even he would say it! People would just say, 'oh, you've got your whole life ahead of you, that's not happening yet, stop borrowing trouble,' or something, but just ignoring it doesn't make it go away! It's absolutely, definitely going to happen, and I don't know what to do."
"Well, you can't stop it, either. You're gonna get old if you don't die first. You're gonna hate it. And?"
Flavio rested his arms on the table, and then let his chin fall onto his folded hands. "I just..."
"Come on, what do you wanna hear? Life sucks and there isn't shit we can do about it. Is that the advice you're looking for?"
"I don't know."
"Well. Try asking the man himself next time. It's his business, not mine."
"I'm sorry."
"Nah, don't sweat it. If for some reason you really don't think you can ask your best friend an honest question" - he ladled the sarcasm on thick enough that even a drunk person should notice it, even if that drunk was Flavio - "I'll do my best as some sketchy-ass third party." He tapped his own mug, empty now for the third or fourth time. "As long as you're buying, anyway."
"You... really are a terrible old man."
"Isn't that what you came for?"
