Chapter Text
“It won't be for long,” Laurence said more than once in the months before they contacted Her.
There were arguments all the time, those days, Laurence with his Church and his healing and Gehrman with his Workshop and his hunting, the bloated shadow of the corpse they hadn't had the sense to leave alone threading silent tendrils through their words. The thought of seeing Laurence inspired near as much dread in Gehrman as the sight of another of his hunters lost to the beasts that loomed large and larger with every passing dawn. Gehrman still went, of course, when Laurence sent for him, but otherwise he avoided white robes like the plague. He remained in the Workshop night after night, tinkering with schematics and delegating the chance of crossing paths with Ludwig's band to his students.
The summoning was the one common ground they found. Laurence needed divine counsel, Gehrman the power to turn the tide. She offered both. Anything they wanted, the Choir translators relayed – anything at all.
The price was hardly a price.
They still argued. It seemed impossible for them not to anymore. When they had to meet to discuss the progress in negotiations, Laurence sounded like a looping record, this will solve a great deal and it has to be done and Yharnam can't last with us as we are, until Gehrman bit at him who are you trying to convince and Laurence snapped back can't you put up with me for one hour, fingers pressing into his eyes. He was getting headaches more often and growing less averse to placing the blame for them at Gehrman's feet.
It won't be for long was a phrase that cropped up as they neared the end. Laurence said, “I'll look for an alternative while you're gone. There must be one.”
“I'm trusting you,” Gehrman replied. That was the least threatening part of the arrangement, the time span. It wouldn't be forever. Whatever else Gehrman could and would say about Vicar Laurence, he would never deny that the man was brilliant. If another way existed – and it must, there could not be only one method to any result – then Laurence would find it.
She agreed to that term as well: when the hour came that Her help was no longer necessary, She would return what She took without conflict. So far as the Choir could tell, She was sincere. Though the gods can lie, they tend to be very bad at it; they don't understand humans well enough to know what information they can get away with twisting.
But years passed and the hunters who came through the dream stopped speaking of Laurence. Vicar Amelia, they said in the same breath as the Healing Church, and Laurence? No, I don't. No one's seen him in years. The Church won't say.
And Gehrman and Laurence had not told anyone about Her outside of the few Choir masters they couldn't have contacted Her without.
That seems, in retrospect, something of an oversight.
They had reason for it. The Fishing Hamlet's long pall still loomed over them. The Hamlet had been a mistake. It had been, really, the worst mistake anyone would ever make, and the second worst mistake was the number of people Gehrman and Laurence dragged into the floodwaters with them. The agreement to keep things with Her quiet was an unspoken one, but it bound them both as tightly as a blood oath: neither could have borne a potential repeat.
(They still could not discover the fate of the child. Though Gehrman had dreams, sometimes, and when he woke from them there was salt on his tongue and rain on his face and a cry caught unvoiced in his throat.
He did not tell Laurence.)
Regret is paltry when set against the weight of so many years. Gehrman is nothing anymore but tired. He wants to sleep, he wants to cut off his hands so they will never make anything again, he wants a sky without moonlight and a darkness without memories.
What he gets is another nightmare.
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It's a bloodbath once he realizes what's happened. He rages. He curses and spits and howls. He descends from the abandoned Workshop in an onslaught of siderite and silver and paves a road with bodies through the Cathedral Ward. In the haze, he doesn't notice that he recognizes most of them, or he notices and doesn't care.
The Grand Cathedral might have been carved brick by brick from his memories. His scythe drags on the stairs, clanging against stone with every step he takes between the statues of the watcher gods.
The air is clear and sharp and hollow in his lungs. Nostalgia gnaws at the orange-lit shadows, homesickness sours each breath he takes, and he does not know if they come from the stench of the town's blood or the weight of the nightmarish sky. More of his life has been spent beneath the bleeding moon's eye than under Yharnam's spires.
“Laurence!” he shouts, voice cracking.
If he spared a thought to consider, he would come to the conclusion that Laurence has been buried for decades, that if he was not buried he would still be Gehrman's age and most likely retired, and that if he was not retired then he would still not be waiting here for Gehrman while there is a literal river of blood flowing through the Ward. But logic is not what brought him to the Cathedral. It has been a long night, and the non-sense of dreams comes too easily to him. If Laurence is anywhere in this parody of Yharnam, then this is the place where Gehrman will find him. That's all.
Some part of him hopes, as the name rings in his ears, that he'll clear the stairs to an empty hall. Laurence should not be in a nightmare. If Gehrman had his way, no one would. But the rest of him wants in that moment nothing more than to see Laurence again. His hands are steady, and his eyes are clear, and his voice shakes. He has waited; and he has waited; and he has waited; and the wait is over and it is not Laurence's doing.
He should know better than this. Searching for answers was what landed them here. But he is old and tired and stupid (Laurence was always the brilliant one); he is beyond regret and beyond consequences.
If Laurence is dead, Gehrman would like to see the corpse. It has been such a long night. He should be allowed that much resolution, at least.