Garrance Oneshots

Bittersweet Memories

"Garroth....."

The blonde male turned around, looking st his youngest brother. His half brother, a child of his mother and another man. But he didn't mind only being half related to Vylad. He loved his brother either way, fully related or not. Heck, he still would have cared for him if he wasn't his brother at all.

But remembering the cut in their blood wasn't what had made him freeze. It was what Vylad was holding, what he was looking at. His youngest brother had been begging him to let him in the basement of his home, and finally he had agreed. He had invited his other younger brother, Zane, down there as well, but the emo male had stayed upstairs.

"Is this you?" Vylad asked him, showing him a sketchbook.

The sketchbook was old, the pages slightly faded and torn up at the corners. Garroth made his way over to his youngest brother, taking a closer look at the drawing. The trails of the pencil were either faded out or smudged, and not because of Garroth's forgetful tendencies. He actually took great care for these relics, the only possessions he had to remind him of his old friends. The drawing was faded out because of where it had been kept, in the boarded up basement of an old hotel. He had gotten possession of these objects due to his relationship with those friends.

"Yes, that is me." Garroth answered with a nod, somehow managing to get the words out.

The drawing was of him. It was a close up drawing, with details in his face. Especially his eyes. The artist of the drawing always did take most care when drawing the eyes, but he never did figure out why. He assumed it was either because drawing the second eye was so painful, or because he had always been told that he had beautiful eyes. (Literally people always said this to me last year, and it creeped me out beyond belief.) But below the drawing, written in neat cursive, was his name; Garroth Taylor Ro'Meave.

"There really is a lot of old stuff down here...." Vylad started, cracking a smile. "Zane's missing out."

"Knowing him, he's probably raiding the kitchen for all the food." Garroth went along with the joke, wishing he could genuinely smiled down here.

Various cardboard boxes were cluttered in the basement, filled with old valuables from the war. Precious belongings of people who were taken away, and never came back to reclaim their possessions. Traditional kimonos, an old eletric rice cooker, various art supplies and sketchbooks, photo albums, wedding and birth certificates, legal citizenship documents, old record discs, and other objects. He honestly forgot some of the things down there, it had been so long since he last visited them.

"Who did this all belong to?" He asked, glancing around at all the boxes and objects.

"Many people. All friends of mine from before and during the war..." He answered, sighing heavily. "But this sketchbook specifically.... it belonged to someone very important. Zane knows who they are, and I don't doubt that you do too."

"Who? You have a lot of friends who loved to draw." He pointed out, handing him the old sketchbook.

"Laurance Zhval." He announced, staring down at the sketchbook as tears brimmed in his eyes.

~~~~

"So let me get this straight.... Laurance was Japanese?"

"It surprised me too."

Now they were sitting in Garroth's dining room, about to discuss the treasures hidden in his basement. They would have held this conversation in the living room, but the middle child of their brotherly trio had fallen asleep in there.

"Was he deported like the others?" Vylad asked, not quite dealing with it as well as Garroth had hoped.

"He was. He got evacuated to a concentration camp, one called Camp Harmony." He nodded, staring at his cup of green tea.