Giving you what you wanted.

Now, in Loch Fog

Kaiser's head swirls toward the tavern entrance at the chiming of the bell. Lips curling in a defeated smile as he watches Rye make his way out.

Merette's heart clenches when his dark orbs cut to her, she can barely stand the look in his eyes— all crushed and devastated.

He cocks his head to the side, chin jutting out toward Leisl tucked against her chest. "Is she his?" Kaiser breathes, as if scared to unfurl the truth.

Merette opens her mouth though she doesn't even know why, because sure as hell she couldn't say she's Kaiser's. Her mouth falls shut when no voice flies past her open lips, feeling as if the sand underneath her is slipping away.

From the anxiety rippling through her senses, Merette doesn't realize when actually Rye comes to stand beside her, she doesn't even hear the footsteps. A warm hand on her shoulder is what told her about his arrival. "Come, let's go home." He says, stern.

"You can't leave me without telling me the truth, Merette. I believe at least I deserve to know." Kaiser speaks out, now it's not at all a whisper, it's loud and clear, said in a baritone voice.

And when she cuts her gaze from Rye and drags it up to Kaiser, his shoulders are no longer hunched, he's on his full length— Now as she stares at him, he feels larger than Merette's life— and his eyes no longer hold the desperation or the betrayal. At the moment, they are colored in range.

"I want answers." He repeats.

So Merette gives him what he wants, what he advocates to be his right. "No."

"Don't lie, Merette."

"What do you want? She clearly doesn't want to talk to you." Rye's voice slit through the little bubble that seems to circle around Merette and Kaiser. Rye's eyebrows are knit together in irritation when Merette throws him a glance, his fiery eyes boring into Kaiser who stands nonchalant, though her eyes cannot stay on his face for long because the magnetic force oozing out of Kaiser demands all her attention.

As if in a trance, Merette speaks out, "She ain't his."

"You can't lie to me, you know that, right?" His lips stretch ever the slightest by one corner, shaking his head as he takes a step back. "I've done so much for you, so don't give me what I don't deserve."

So don't give me what I don't deserve. It echoes through the walls of Merette's mind. She doesn't think she ever gave him what he deserved. Now, she can't give it either.

"I'm telling you the truth. Leisl is not Rye's kid. She's mine."

The laugh that comes out of Kaiser's mouth is booming and startlingly icy, eyes turning sharp. "It takes two to make a child, Merette. I hope you know."

And that one in the two is you. She wants to voice it out in the open air, but as much as her tongue itches to shape out those words, she's scared shitless for them to leave her lips. Merette doesn't want it. She doesn't want her child to be a part of her father's vicious deeds like Kaiser subject himself into his father's.

"I've given you what you wanted. Now I shall go, because I can no longer stand you. I hope we're clear." Merette says with borrowed confidence. She hopes she will never see his face again, even though it's wishful thinking.

"Of course, you can't stand me now you know better." Kaiser spits, words laced with malice. "And just suppose that I believed you. That I didn't come to a point that you fled Loch Fog for him." He jabs a finger in the direction of Rye.

Merette's face falls, eyebrows scrunching down as she pins him a glare that's veiled in disbelief. "That's the lowest you can be, Kaiser." She breaths in incredulity. "It's Rye, Rafaela's brother, my cousin." She throws her head back in exasperation. "God, I don't even know why I am convincing you."

Kaiser's mouth opens in protest but it falls shut closely as if he could see a bit of Rafaela in Rye's features. "How does that make him out of your league?" He asks, voicing out a genuine wonder.

"Christ, Kaiser, you are full of shit."

He chuckles, "I know."

***

Silence is what met Merette in the car, the ride back home doesn't take so long. And all the while she sits in the car, she sits in silence, save for the whines and whimpers coming out of Leisl's tiny lips.

Rye doesn't say anything. Anything at all. And Merette is sure it's because he doesn't want to make her any more uncomfortable than she already is. The encounter with her past love really was a hard blow at Merette's face when she didn't even presume to see his face again, at least not before a decade.

Merette is the one to break the silence, her shaky whisper slicing through the air packed with tension. "Do you think he will come back?"

Rye's hand on the steering wheel tightens, a sigh pushes past his pale pink lips, long and carried in exhaustion. "I'm not sure." He rubs the hand that is not holding the wheel up on the side of his face, eyes cutting to Merette's for a second before he glides them back to the road ahead. "I don't want to be over-optimistic or want to console you by saying he won't. Because…" He looks back at Merette in her eyes, teeth grazing his lower lips in thought, then he speaks up, "We both know he would. It's Kaiser, after all."

She expects it, she knows it. Merette knows Kaiser too well to not know it. "But you could still humor me, uncle Rye." She forces out a laugh, trying to clear the air, to wipe out the tension that suffocates them in the car.

"You don't have to act like everything is fine, May."

That's it.

They didn't talk after that.