#izana can of course overcome that super quick but retsu just does not care. she did very much kill touka. bc that seemed appropriate

[redmemoirs]

featuring wildly out of character izana: an introduction to the retsu au that's been eating at my brain for weeks

Touka Bergatt is dead. Dame Retsu Sion, vassal of House Arleon, Captain of the Lilias Knights Circle, knighted by Her Majesty herself in honour of her noble deeds, readily pleads guilty. This is all very terrible news for Izana, who knows even before Lady Arleon’s letter arrives that he needs to find someone else to pin this on, and fast.

The restoration of order to the North has been a long and arduous process. He’s well aware of this, thanks to both Her Majesty and Lady Arleon keeping him constantly informed, the latter through genuine reports and the former through drunken ramblings. There is no one better suited to Warden of the North than his honourable mother, he knows. So he only really pays attention when it’s Haki giving updates, through her brother or her own correspondence. Touka Bergatt is familiar to him, if only because Haki’s knight says, “You remind me of someone,” and then makes a face and turns tail, and he has to hunt down Haki to ask what the hell that means and the only answer he gets is peals of laughter.

Regardless. He’s aware of Touka Bergatt, and what his existence means for the North. He’s aware of Lady Arleon’s lacking hopes in his and his clan’s true assimilation under the royal banner. He’s aware, even if she treats them affably in public and in private, of Her Majesty’s true thoughts on the matter.

But the North is not his headache to contend with. He has all the rest of Clarines to wrestle with, and a brother to raise. Her Majesty can keep her monopoly on the North, contested only by Arleon. It’s not his problem. It never will be.

Then Touka dies, and he almost thinks it’s a good thing, until the next little tidbit of news is, “Haki’s knight killed him.”

Not that anyone actually calls her Haki’s knight anymore. It’s more Captain of Lilias, or Viscount Sion, or Rugilia’s betrothed(?). He’s not sure where that last one came from, but he’s not particularly concerned. Because to him, first and foremost, she will always be Haki’s knight, because Haki will never let him forget that.

Because the letter on his desk, arriving almost faster than the scandal of the murder, says approximately this: You will have no North, if we lose Retsu.

We, of course, being Haki alone, because she’s never been abashed in leveraging her authority. He’d admired that, once. Still does, if begrudgingly, because. Well. The North has never been his problem. How could he possibly change this?

Especially when the killer herself admits it?

You will have no North, Haki’s letter threatens, so he sighs, leaves his castle to Haruka (You will have no Wistal, he writes, before clarity strikes and he tosses it in the fireplace) and makes his way to winter.

And she’s not even grateful, is the worst part. He uses and abuses his royal authority to get her out of the cells and under his own watch and all she has to say is, “Who are you?” Fine. Maybe he doesn’t need the North. Haki can keep it, along with Her Majesty, along with their dead Bergatt and his very alive and angry followers. He much prefers the Wistal winters to Wilant summers anyway.