"Precious Thing" is episode 12 of the Berserk manga series.
Summary[]
Griffith and Charlotte have left the bustle of the party to share a moment alone outside. He offers her a seat on his cape on a fountain's edge, which she accepts.
Guts makes his way up the flight of stairs but is stopped by Casca, who refuses to let Guts embarrass Griffith by walking in on his and Charlotte's conversation while covered in sewage and blood. She pulls Guts' dagger from its sheath and uses it to cut a strip of cloth from her sleeve, with which she bandages Guts' arrow puncture.
Charlotte tells Griffith that the party was her father's idea, as a way of distracting themselves from the long war between Midland and Tudor. Griffith recalls the conversation he and Charlotte had together during the autumn hunt regarding the brutality of men and their need for war. He posits that they aren't satisfying an urge to cause harm, but instead preserving their own dreams. Griffith continues, saying that all men should have a dream they want to accomplish and that he can't abide people who are simply born and live without purpose, a notion that profoundly affects Guts.
Griffith apologizes to Charlotte for rambling, but she is just as absorbed in Griffith's words as Guts. She admits that upon first seeing Griffith, she thought he was high-born, and couldn't believe he was a commoner. She is amazed that Griffith displays all the magnificence of a noble but is as down-to-earth as a common peasant. She wonders aloud whether it's this aspect of him that seems to attract all his friends. From afar, Casca clenches her fist. Griffith sinks into another monologue.
He acknowledges his band members as excellent troops and comrades who devote themselves to the dream he envisions but, to Griffith, a friend is something else. His friend, Griffith says, is his "equal" - the person that would never depend upon another's dream, that has their own reason to be alive and would oppose those that trample that dream, Griffith included.
Guts is struck by these words. Casca takes notice of Guts' reaction to Griffith's speech. When Griffith and Charlotte gaze into each other's eyes, Casca turns away.
Griffith and Charlotte's conversation is interrupted by a maidservant who comes to alert Charlotte to her uncle Julius' death. The two panic-stricken women speak, unaware that it was Griffith's machinations which led to Julius' demise. The White Falcon smiles.
Guts, as yet unseen by Griffith, turns and leaves, leaving Casca alone and confused on the steps of the banquet hall as she stares at Guts' bandaged wound.