Berserk : The Deviant

The next morning, Barkha returned to the palace for Giorgio with Ros by his side. She had already asked if she could join him, and he had no problem with that.

He inquired with his men about Giorgio's safety, and everything was going very well. He had spent a fairly peaceful night in the castle apartments under their protection.

They asked Barkha who Ros was, and she introduced herself to them before he dismissed them. He would personally protect Giorgio during the day, so they could rest, drink, or even have a good time at the brothels while he took care of everything.

He then went to join Giorgio, who seemed to be having breakfast with the king and the princess. He nonchalantly entered the room with Ros, despite the guards recognizing him, before sitting down with her without an invitation.

"Let's have something to eat. I'm starving after screwing some of your prostitutes most of the night. My compliments to the women of your kingdom, Your Majesty..." He said to the king, annoyed by his manners, and asked that they be served as well. 

The King : Lady Ros, it disappoints me to see you in the company of this individual, you who are the rose of our falcons. 

"I have left the falcon troop, Your Majesty. From now on, I work for Barkha, the Brotherhood of shadows, to protect the young Lord Giorgio during his journey." Ros said calmly as Giorgio looked at her and he could swear that Ros was easily one of the most beautiful women he had seen in his entire life. 

"Lady Ros, it's a real pleasure to finally meet you, and I must admit that for a first time, the rumors about a woman's beauty are not unreasonable." Giorgio stood up and elegantly kissed Ros's hand, who gave him a devastating smile.

"Giorgio, I won't say anything to your wife if you find me a competent crew for my three ships. It'll save me the effort of looking for one myself. Oh, I want sailors from Ys. Apparently, the best come from there, and they also build your ships." Barkha told him without even looking at him as she continued to eat.

Giorgio: Deal, you truly are a profiteering and despicable being.

"Vile flatterer, I admire you too..." Barkha said mockingly. After all, this mission was quite rewarding. He looked at Princess Charlotte, who was staring at him with animosity, and it angered him.

"Can you ask your daughter to avoid staring at me ? I've never killed a princess before..." He said to the king.

"YOU DARE THREATEN MY DAUGHTER ?!" The king banged his fist on the table and the guards were alerted.

"Of course it's a threat, Your Majesty. Do you know how many times the Emperor of Tudor asked me to kill you or your DAUGHTER ? You're alive because I refused every time..." Barkha told him, drinking from his cup of wine.

"Intriguing ! Why did you refuse ? Wasn't the price to the liking of a money-lover like you?" Giorgio asked him.

"Oh yes, it was, only I was already in the middle of a military campaign and my men were in training. Training my men is the thing I take most seriously, and I wasn't going to interrupt it to slit two throats, despite all the money it would have earned me.

Now imagine that after my current mission, someone pays me to take your lives, and I agree because your spoiled daughter looks at me in an annoying way." Barkha finished, looking the king coldly in the eyes, a look that chilled the king's heart, and he ordered his daughter to leave the table under escort. 

The King : I'll have your head one day, you dirty dog. 

"Now, now, why so much hatred when we can get along so well ? The Emperor of Tudor is behind your wife's death if you ignore it (In this reality, the queen died before the falcons arrived) , for 15,000 gold coins I'll bring you his head in the coming days..." Barkha told him while Giorgio looked at him in a rather frightened manner while the Midland king began to discuss a little more calmly with him, Giorgio was between disgust and admiration towards Barkha who was truly an evil opportunist. 

Later, Kail one of Barkha's men advanced into one of the palace gardens and made a strange whistle sound with his fingers. A few seconds later, a very large, strange-looking crow landed there with a live rabbit between its talons and with its anthropomorphic face, the strange crow began to savagely devour the rabbit while it had teeth in its beak and the scene was truly frightening.

This raven was a bird possessed by a spirit conjured through magic, just like their horses, possessed by Corell's sorcery. These ravens, thanks to the spirits within them, were extremely fast and durable, in addition to having a perfect sense of direction and being able to find the geographical position of a soul it had already sensed before. Every deployed team of the Brotherhood had a cursed raven to deliver messages, and they were horribly fast.

"Last orders from the boss, there's a new mission for my brothers in Tudor, where Lord Duro is currently. Now, go to them and hurry..." Kail told him after attaching the message to the cursed raven's leg, which took off with prodigious speed.

(Later)

A small crowd of members of the Band of the Hawk had gathered at the large hill where the duel between Guts and their leader Griffith was supposed to take place.

They were all shaken to learn that Guts wanted to leave them now and that Griffith wanted to hold him back by force.

"I can't believe the commander wants to leave..."

"WHY ? I just wish I knew why..."

"We hope Griffith can bring him to his senses."

"That dirty traitor Guts, I hope Griffith takes one of his arms and teaches him a lesson. From the beginning, I knew this guy was a coward. Just by the look on his face and the look on his face, this guy thinks he's someone Griffith's equal..." Corkus said contemptuously.

 Judeau : Corkus, I don't see how leaving makes Guts a traitor, especially considering everything he's done for the gang. His recruitment wasn't like ours, and he'd warned him he'd leave whenever he wanted... the one who actually betrayed him... was Griffith...

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" Corkus got angry. Rickert tried to calm him down, but he told him to shut up.

Judeau: Unlike us, who were fascinated by Griffith and were nowhere near his level, Guts beat him from the start and followed him for his own gain, not to cling to Griffith's dream like us. Of all of us, he was the only one who could be his friend and equal. We've all seen it, but now that Guts wants to leave, as was part of their agreement from the start, Griffith wants to deprive him of his freedom. You didn't see the look he had yesterday...

"Enough, I don't want to hear you! Guts, Griffith's equal ? ​​What a joker ! Griffith is light years ahead of that selfish jerk." Corkus retorted.

"Do you think he'd do that for someone like you if you tried to leave the gang?" Pippin, who was usually so quiet and taciturn, asked him. Everyone looked at him in surprise while Corkus remained without an answer for a moment.

This question, they all asked themselves the same thing in their minds: "Would Griffith try to hold them back like that if they left ?" They all knew the answer was a resounding No, they were all replaceable, but there was only one Guts, just like there was only one Griffith.

 Griffith was the first of the duelists to arrive, and judging by his condition, he'd had a rather restless night. Everyone fell silent, and Casca moved closer to see how he was and try to convince him to try another approach with Guts.

She blamed herself for causing this, as it wasn't her place to tell them Guts was leaving, but it was too late to back down; it was her fault that their separation had turned out this way after all. 

When Guts arrived with his sword a few minutes later, the tension rose, and the members of the Black Hawks, who were his squad, tried to question him insistently to find out if he was really leaving, and his silence was the clearest possible answer for them.

Now Guts had put his friendship with Griffith aside; there was no way anyone was going to want to take his freedom. He set his bundle on the ground and drew his sword, saying they were going to get this over with quickly.

He didn't want to get sentimental toward someone who saw him as a possession rather than a brother in arms.

Casca : Guts, please... You and Griffith are friends, this is all my fault, and I should never have brought it up... not like this, anyway, but-(interrupted)

"Don't you think you've already done enough?" Guts asked her coldly, and she tried to press on, but Griffith told her to move aside; nothing could be undone now.

Guts was different from the one in the main reality; he had a modicum of self-respect and wasn't going to feel bad about correcting anyone who tried to take his freedom.

"Put yourself on guard..." Griffith told him, taking a guard Guts had never seen before, but looking at his eyes and breathing pattern, Griffith was in the state of contraction that Barkha had taught Guts to use when he was fighting seriously, at his peak, or close to his capacity in Griffith's case.

"In a single night, he reached this Staten ? Impressive..." Guts thought, taking a simple guard ; his breathing, his posture, and his thinking were all in perfect harmony, and he didn't question it.

He watched Griffith's eyes scan his posture, looking for flaws. He knew Griffith and he was a skilled tactician, but that was also his problem.

"He's not in the instinctive state, I was wrong. He's barely at the door because he doesn't trust his instincts but his tactics while this state requires a harmony of both.

Your tactical genius which is nevertheless your greatest asset will never allow you to reach this state despite all your talent Griffith... how I pity you..." He thought while looking at him with a certain pity that Griffith noticed and it put him out of his mind before he charged Guts who waited for him without moving. 

Griffith's attack turned out to be an oblique strike which was in fact a feint for a thrust attack that Guts saw perfectly coming before quickly shifting and trapping Griffith's arm under his left armpit before giving him a violent headbutt which broke Griffith's nose now on his knees.

"You underestimated me, Griffith..." Guts said before delivering a violent punch that made Griffith drop the hilt of his saber, Casca turned away, and the crowd fell completely silent.

"You, who are usually so smart, strategic, and so sure of yourself, I know that you lose your composure when faced with something beyond your control. (hits) Do you seriously think you're the only one who knows how to observe others and know their flaws?

(hits) I'm not your thing, (hits) I'm not clinging to your dreams like them, (hits) I tried to be your friend, but you thought you could possess me like those who foolishly threw their lives away for you..." Guts was about to hit him again, but Griffith's hand landed on his cheek.

"Don't leave me..." Griffith told him as his eyes filled with tears, much to the others' shock. Guts saw despair replace the arrogant possessiveness Griffith had in his eyes earlier and let go, standing up.

Guts: What do you want from me, exactly ?

"I can't... I can't let you go... I need you by my side... you're important to the hawks... you're important to me..." Griffith told him, kneeling and tearing up, clutching his arms like he was clawing at his arms at the river.

He loved Guts and needed him without knowing how to tell him properly, the only way for him in his nature to keep Guts with him would have been to dominate him as he dominated others but as from the beginning, Guts was not someone he could dominate and it was also the major reason why Griffith fell in love with him without his knowledge.

"I refuse to be attached to your dream Griffith, I refuse to be your possession... if I were so important and precious you would have had a minimum of esteem to respect the choice of my departure." Guts told him while picking up his bundle, he didn't understand the exact meaning of Griffith's desperate words just as Griffith himself didn't know how to express what he felt.

 "You were Griffith before me and you'll be Griffith long after me, I will come back if necessary...we could have parted ways differently..." Guts said sadly as he passed Griffith on his knees who began to shiver with his teary eyes staring in the void as Guts left.

Casca ran towards him and called out to him several times but he did not turn around, the others looked at Griffith in a state they would never have imagined...vulnerable, helpless and desperate. 

Griffith who was for them a practically celestial and impossible to reach was reached by Guts, they saw him as they should have seen him from the beginning, as a human as much as they were.

Quickly, they came to support him and bring him back to the barracks where Casca took care of his facial injuries and the expression on his face remained dull, as if he was in a trance, as if he was broken.

He had finally convinced himself that after all these years, Guts would look at him the same way as the others and that he would have made him his own like a bird in a magnificent gilded cage, but he had been completely mistaken.

Who could blame him for thinking that way after he and Guts had grown so close ? They complemented and understood each other so well that Griffith had fallen in love with him and taken Guts's presence by his side for granted. 

Now, the return to reality was brutal for Griffith who realized that unlike the others, Guts didn't cling to his light like the others because Guts was his own light, an independent being, far from the grip of his dreams or ambitions.