After the letter was read and tears had been well and fully shed, she looked back up, her reddened, old eyes meeting Kreig’s own.

She seemed far older than she really was. The woman in the pictures with the Peter of 17 years seemed to be only around 30, while this woman seemed almost 50 or 60 despite only ten years having passed. Clearly, these years had taken a toll on her, weighing down her weary face and body with grief to such a point where she could barely clean, barely even care for herself, if her greasy hairstyle and tattered clothes were anything to go by.

“You’re Kreig, aren’t you?” she said, a glint before unseen shining in her clear eyes. With her tears expelled, she now seemed far younger than before. Despite how unhappy George seemed that Kreig had been recognized, neither he nor Kreig made any move to correct her. A smile, genuine and rosy, bloomed on her lips. “Thank you for taking care of my son.”

Kreig nodded deeply. “He was a close friend, it was only natural.”

Her smile broadened further as she leaned back in her chair, holding the letter to her chest. “Yes, of course…. To think he’d make such good friends. Still, it must have been hard on you, all of this. Tell me, what happened after his-, his passing? You needn’t tell if you’d rather not.”

As Kreig opened his mouth to speak, as he mentally prepared himself to retell the tale he told only an hour earlier, he was suddenly struck by a thought. A little detail, a little sput of his own will. An expression of his freedom that Peter must have given to him. “...No,” Kreig said softly, “I think I’d rather not.”

He had good reason not to. The last time he spoke of such a part of his life, he felt himself pulled back, absorbed into his own memories, body and soul. He couldn’t afford to do that in front of her.

Still, denying her felt like an irredeemable sin, something unacceptable, punishable with fifty lashing and solitary confinement, something so fundamentally different from his own personality and will that it almost felt as though Peter had acted through him as an arbiter of freedom. A sense of dread welled up within him as he foolishly expected some sort of punishment for daring to deny the request of someone.

She merely smiled, eyes and all. Softly. So softly it felt like a bed of dune, a heavenly cloud of rose petals. “That’s alright. This letter is enough in every sense.”

George seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, but Kreig still sat tense and immovable.

-Huh? That was it? No frown, no words of disappointment, no callous explanation of how selfish he was to deny the request of another? Nobody telling him that to reject the word of the cardinals and priests and the White One was to reject the word of the Lord Below? That every sin of irresponsibility that Kreig indulged in would merely lead to his body being denied entrance into the caring womb of the White Roots below?

….Nothing like that?

“...You’re welcome,” Kreig said, yet to fully understand what had just happened. His denying someone had been accepted. His own feelings had been validated and understood.

She turned to George. “Tell me, young man, how would I contact you again? I’d love to have you and your closest over for dinner sometime. It’s been too long since I’ve had company like this, I fear I may come to miss it too much after you leave.”

An hour ago, there would have been no doubts in George’s mind about denying her. Sure, by the use of a home computer and some basic thinking (she already knew who Kreig was, it made sense) she could find out his name and address quite easily, but at least if that happened George could still tell the authorities that at least he hadn’t willingly given her that information. But an hour ago, he hadn’t seen the effect Kreig’s letter had had on anybody yet. An hour ago, he hadn’t seen a grown woman cry like this.

“...My name is George Wiedemann, and you can call me at...” with all the reluctance of a knowing sinner, George admitted all sorts of information to her, from where he lived to his phone number.

When all was said and done and she lit up like the sun and pulled out a notebook to scribble it down, George felt the strange feeling that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Nothing at all.

“Thank you,” she said after all was said and done, “I’ll be sure to call you sometime.”

Since the tea had been drunk and numbers had been exchanged, there was nothing left. Although reluctant, Mrs Willowgrove showed them the door, and with a wave and a smile she hadn’t worn in too long, Kreig and George left. Neither spoke to the other, not about what had happened and not about what might happen. They just drove in silence. It was a warm sort of silence, where neither party felt compelled to speak over the hum of the engine or the whistling wind.

It was comfortable, despite the thoughts whirling through George’s mind.

Was it the right choice? Had he done the right thing to let her know their names and faces? How could he possibly believe that such a kindly old woman could be a threat to them? And even if she was, did he have anything left to fear with Kreig around? Just by what he knows so far, couldn’t he order Kreig to do anything for him? What did he have to fear when the greatest threat in the world seemed subservient to him?

...What the hell was he thinking? Kreig wasn’t some object, neither was he mindless. He had his life. He was his brother. This wasn’t about him, this was about making Kreig into a real person again. Making him whole after all he went through. Abusing a man in such a position… It would be downright evil.

But he couldn’t be soft on him. No, despite what it might seem Kreig needed, he couldn’t treat him like a child. That’d be truly dehumanizing. Let him recover, but give him a little push when it comes down to it.

That was what George was thinking.

Kreig’s thoughts were pretty much silent. Sure, he was unhappy that George’s car still had a chunk of the door gouged out, but other than that…

He was… happy? Was that it? Was that the emotion surging through his body like healing magic? But he had done wrong. There was nothing good about saying no to someone who wanted something from him. It was selfish. He’d been selfish, and although she seemed forgiving enough about it, Kreig himself certainly wasn’t. Never had following orders been a bad choice for him. It had let him survive, and being rebellious certainly hadn’t.

There was a reason Kreig was alive and Peter was not.

Peter wouldn’t give up his faith, wouldn’t buckle under the heels of the Empire. He could take the torture, but he couldn’t take the idea of being subservient someone he didn’t respect. So, in part for the Empire to prove a point to Kreig, he was executed. Killing thousands of unwritten scriptures and thousands of unsung verses. Freedom plucked the wings off of the bird.

Freedom at the cost of life wasn’t freedom at all.

That was how Kreig saw it.

When he came out of it, the car had stopped and George was looking at him as though he had something he wanted to say. But he didn’t, and Kreig couldn’t respond to silence. They went inside the apartment, greeted Sam, told her in light tones what had happened, and that was that. Kreig made dinner, they ate it gladly, and that was that. The evening activities George and Sam indulged in seemed for Sam to be something she did on the television in the living room while George took a seat at the kitchen table with a pile of taxes.

This left Kreig a bit out. In the end, with nothing else to do, he found himself paper and a pencil and sat down to draw. A sketch of Mrs Willowgrove. Another of Annie Swallowbird. And then, finally, as if in preparation for a future painting, he drew Mrs Willowgrove and Peter. Both as they were, with Peter at the age of 47 and Mrs Willowgrove as she had been when Kreig saw her. Together, as if nothing had happened at all. Just a sketch.

George leaned over the table, getting a good look at what Kreig had drawn so far. “We should get you some painting supplies.” A perfectly objective statement that Kreig couldn’t disagree with.

Sam piped in. “Yeah, we’ll buy you some tomorrow evening! We’ll be going to work the both of us, so one of us can just drop in at some store somewhere. By the way, uh, you’ve got two things to do tomorrow. First up you’ve got that whole tutoring business, and then at like 3 you’ve got this appointment with a psychiatrist, I think? The dude we met down when we saw you the first time. I’ll write a note with the times when I can remember it.”

George agreed with her, and after an hour or so of them all collectively existing in the same vicinity (Sam retrieved cake from the fridge after a while but Kreig didn’t want any), everyone went off to bed.

Kreig still didn’t like the thought or feeling of sleeping, but… He still did it. The bed was soft, and after a rather eventful day, his eyelids were heavy too.

He fell asleep pretty immediately.