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aeriefel · 2 years ago

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❛ i hope you find the peace you’re searching for. ❜

The cavern yawned like the great big mouth of a beached fish, the passage twisting in darkness the further into the throat you went. Dread sunk in Eri’s gut with the tact of a stone plunging into the sea.

She didn’t remember how she got here. There was a fight - yes, a bad one. In Coerthas, she and Sarien had fought tooth and nail, rolling around in the dirt as their fists connected to bone and blood drenched the snow. Ugh. She could feel the welt Sarien left on her eye and taste the sharp cut on her lip. But she couldn’t remember how they ended up here…

A ball of yellow flame hovered some feet before her. Eri blinked blearily at it.

A heavy thunk sent Eri jumping back into the wall and she broke into a surprised shriek when pain, sharp and jagged, clawed its talons deep through the bone in her leg.

“Oh what, oh what, oh what!” Eri gripped her leg but knocked her head back when it just made the pain worse. Dark spots swam in her vision. “What?!”

Eri felt blindly around her leg. Broken leg. She had a broken leg. It had to be. She had - she had to set the bone. Leg had to heal. Crutches. Weeks - months to heal. Weeks if Eri had anything to say about it. She had to - “Fuck!” Eri rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes and bit down hard on her lip. Iron bled into her mouth.

Eri couldn’t afford this. Even with all her expertise and all the healing in the world, a broken leg would set her back weeks. She didn’t have weeks! She didn’t even have days!

Hands pushed her own aside. Sarien, bruised and scratched, swam into her vision. “No-” Eri threw out a punch - weak, and a terrible one - but Sarien knocked it aside without so much as a second thought. She pinned Eri's shoulders to the cold wall.

“Hold. Still.” Sarien ordered through gritted teeth. Her plated gloves dug into Eri’s shoulders.

Eri swiped at Sarien’s face with a palm full of magic. Sarien pinned Eri’s wrist to the wall instead, the magic fizzing. “I said hold. Still.”

Eri's tail slapped the ground. She searched Sarien's face and made perhaps the worst choice she could've made - she stopped.

Sarien hissed at her and dropped her hands. She pulled a line of thick cotton from her pocket and started wrapping Eri’s thigh.

“What are you doing?”

“Splinting your leg. What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Sarien scoffed. “Aren’t you supposed to be a healer? This should be obvious.” She grabbed a branch and tied it against Eri’s leg with that same cotton.

Eri watched her warily, grimacing when Sarien jostled her leg. She hissed and breathed out quick through her nose at the pain. “Why are you helping me?”

Sarien glanced at her. She started tying a second wrap around Eri’s calf, but didn’t answer. And knowing her, she wasn’t going to answer.

Eri dropped her head back against the wall with a groan. Typical. “Could you at least tell me how we got here?”

“Do you always ask this many questions?”

“Do you always deflect?”

Sarien rolled her eyes and tightened the wrap, making Eri jolt. A smug little smile twitched Sarien’s stony mouth. “We fell into a ditch. There was a cave.”

Vague. And short. Eri sighed. She shouldn’t have expected anything different. When had Sarien ever been forthcoming with information? “Why are we so deep inside it, then?” Eri gestured around them with a wave of her arms, wincing when Sarien finished tying the splint with a tight knot.

“It was snowing. You were unconscious. I don’t think you need help putting two and two together.” Sarien stood and dusted off her hands.

Eri narrowed her eyes. Sarien looked at her and rolled her own. “You were knocked the fuck out. What did you want me to do? Leave you in the snow?”

“We were fighting each other. I hit you with a boulder!”

“Yeah. And?” Sarien crossed her arms. Her bangs slid over the one eye that wasn’t hidden behind her blindfold. Somehow, the red ring around her iris seemed to glow even brighter. Maybe it was simply that they were this close to each other and not going for each other’s throats. Eri never really took the time to study her closely before.

“It just… I thought you would’ve left me there. It would’ve been easy. Unless…” Unless Sarien wanted to help her. Unless she didn’t want to leave Eri in the snow.

Eri smiled smugly at her adversary.

Sarien grimaced. “Don’t look at me like that. Stop.”

“I knew it.”

“Fucking-”

“I knew it!”

“You know nothing about me!” Sarien snarled. The yellow flame behind her flickered. “Just - just stop! Don��t make me regret not leaving you in the snow.”

Eri wasn’t wrong, she knew she wasn’t. But she threw up her hands in peace and smiled at her instead. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t say anything.”

“Eugh.” Sarien rolled her eyes. She stomped toward a pack laying on its side in the center of the room and swung it over her shoulder in one smooth motion, making the light that followed her flicker. Shadows dance dover her scales and made the deep obsidian color glimmer like jewels.

Eri quickly looked away.

Sarien slipped her other arm through the other strap and turned back to Eri. Her visible eye was hard and her mouth even more so. She came back over. “Don’t say a word.”

“Huh?” But Eri didn’t have time to think before Sarien scooped her up in her arms.

A gasp of pain wrenched through Eri’s throat. Sarien, with a frown, adjusted her hold until Eri’s bad leg was snug and Eri herself pressed into Sarien’s chest. Eri went absolutely still. The cold vanished from her body - Sarien radiated heat like a roaring fire; even her armor felt warm. The heat seeped through Eri’s clothes and into her skin and chased the cold away.

Sarien looked down at her, eye fierce. Eri met it readily, wide-eyed. Something twitched over Sarien’s mouth. A grimace? A frown? Sarien was just as stoic as ever.

Sarien looked away and walked into the dark corridor. The light followed her just behind her shoulder, bobbing on an unseen current. Eri took this time to rest her palm on her thigh and push magic into her leg. While she couldn’t fully heal the bone (if only), Eri could at least numb the pain and soothe the muscle.

Eri watched shadows flicker over Sarien’s face. All of this was so…out of the ordinary. It warred with everything Eri had ever seen the dark knight do. Helping Eri? Carrying her out? It completely went against the persona Sarien wore, the reputation she bore. Another smile pulled Eri’s mouth wide, which Sarien pointedly ignored with a flare of nostrils and a narrowed eye.

Eri knew it. She knew it. There was so much more to Sarien than met the eye and she knew it. There was good in her.

“You’re insufferable.” Sarien huffed after a minute. Eri hadn’t realized she’d been staring for so long.

“You told me not to say anything.” Eri gently pat Sarien’s chest. She almost missed the way Sarien’s fingers flexed in her coat. “I was doing good!”

“Good isn’t at all how I’d describe it.”

“I was being kinda obvious, huh?”

“It’s a wonder that you ever became the Warrior of Light, you have no subtlety whatsoever.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe that’s a good thing?”

Sarien looked at her, then. Her one eye alone could’ve pinned Eri to the spot from its intensity. Part of her was so very glad the other remained hidden behind the blindfold. “It’s not.” Sarien answered finally. “You’re predictable and easy to read.”

“You’re pretty predictable, too, you know.” Sarien scoffed at that but Eri continued, “You are! A person just has to know a few things about you and it’s easy peasy to figure you out. Maybe that’s just me, though. None of the others think so. I guess I’m just that good.”

“Yeah, okay, sure.”

“Then what do you think I’m thinking?”

“I don’t care what you’re thinking. I just want you out of my business.”

Eri huffed. Sarien kept moving forward, each step strong and sure. She didn’t say anything else.

Eri blew a long breath through her nose. “I’m going to get you to see it.” Eri said, adjusting her arm around Sarien’s neck. She winced when she pressed her fingers into her knee, sucking in a sharp breath between her teeth. The pain in her leg began to subside as her magic worked its way through her bone. “One day. No matter how long it takes.”

“What are you on now?”

“You have a good heart, Sarien.”

“Ugh, not this again. I’m not in the mood.”

“I’m not going to stop until it finally gets through your head. You can go about your goal in a different way. You can do so much good –”

“ – and you can protect Eorzea with us, yadda yadda yadda. Whatever.” Sarien adjusted her hold on her. “I’ve told you plenty of times that your way won’t get you anywhere.

“But yours won’t, either.” Eri replied softly. “You’ll be lonely and sad with yours.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Eri looked at her - really looked at her. And felt sad. “I hope you find the peace you’re searching for." she told her. "If not by yourself, then…maybe with a friend?”

Sarien didn’t answer.

They didn’t talk the rest of the way back outside. Sarien turned a corner and the mid-morning light met them, shining through the mouth of the cave. Just outside the cave was a wall of rock that curved up a good few yalms, and at the very top was –

Eri shielded her eyes against the sun. “Thancred?”

“Ah, Eri.” The man, silhouetted by the sun, cut a dark figure against the blinding snow, but she could make out the line of his smirk even from down below. “There you are! We’d been looking for you.” His eyes cut to Sarien and his jaw set. “Though, preferably without present company. Are you unharmed?”

“My leg is broken.”

“Did Sarien –”

“No, I fucking did not.” Sarien snapped. “Just come fucking get her before I leave her down here.”

Thancred rubbed his brow, mouth twitching. “Yes yes. There is a path to your right. I will meet you down there. Do not try anything.” He held his hand up to his ear as he ducked down and vanished from sight.

Sarien’s grip on her tightened. When Eri looked up at her, Sarien's limbal ring was bright red. “Sarien?”

A deep, hard frown etched its way over her face. Sarien didn’t look at her. “When we meet again, we’re enemies.”

“But…”

“I don’t care. I will see my vision fulfilled, one way or another. What happened here today was an outlier. I refuse to have my enemy defeated by her own two feet when I can defeat you without gravity kicking your ass.”

Thancred pushed aside brush and jumped down the last yalm, bypassing the last part of the path. He approached with arms outstretched, a vision of ease when, really, he was anything but. “Hand her to me.” he said, voice low.

“Gladly.” Sarien strode to him and shoved Eri into his arms. Eri’s leg dropped too fast and the pain sent her body twisting into Thancred’s chest, biting down on the scream that almost tore through her throat. Tears pinpricked her eyes in a dizzying, spinning array of dark stars.

Something flashed over Sarien’s face – pain? Regret? Eri couldn’t make it out through the world spinning. Whatever it was, it was gone before Eri could tell her it wasn’t her fault, replaced instead by her all too familiar glare.

“Do you always have to do things the hard way?” Thancred snapped at Sarien as he steadied Eri in his arms. Her fist was white-knuckled tight in his jacket. “You did not have to shove her!”

“Just be glad I didn’t take her out when I had the chance.” Sarien snarled back. She waved her hand. Behind her, the flame collapsed in on itself then stretched wide open into a swirling, screaming portal. “Next time, she won’t be so lucky.”

Sarien looked at Eri one last time, an unreadable glint in her eye. The last thing Eri saw of Sarien before the portal winked shut was how her tail, normally held high and proud, hung low between her legs.

#HI HI HI I AM VERY SORRY FOR THE DELAY!!#i had a much much shorter response written but then i hated it so much that i stared at it for a week and spiraled until THIS popped in min #d. thank you so much for the ask and for your messages ;v;#i appreciate you very much #this scene is super condensed ak;sdflkaa;ldskfa #but i hope it makes sense!#ffxiv #writing #wol x wol #or i guess??? wol and wod???#*drum roll*

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