#I'm not really 'participating' in ffxivwrite so much as chasing vibes

[starswornoaths]

Prompt 6: Ring

Lucia comes to Aymeric hoping that he will forsake duty just this once.

She knows he will not. She asks anyway.

(hi I'm late and haven't written anything personal in so long, help)

word count: 2,218

Even knowing the Lord of the house would be away for at least another bell, Lucia had opted to spend it pacing the foyer of Manor de Borel all the same. Possessed of both a spare key and a first name basis with the staff had made the choice easy, when weighed against the prospect of calling him back to the office after hours.

Were she choosing to do this in armor and on record, she might have opted to wait until the morrow to discuss her findings. Were she more loyal to Ishgard than to its leader, she would not have gone through the trouble of being seen buying a bottle of wine from the Crozier as a show of turning up at a friend’s house after work for a genuinely not-uncommon nightcap. Were she a better person, she would not have come at all.

But she was none of those things. So sat she on a sofa in the foyer self soothing with a cat in her lap and an unopened bottle of wine on the table, just beyond reach. By her design, a neat pile of papers writ in as many different hands had been stacked just beyond the bottle, just out of reach and folded for discretion.

Duchess had made herself known the moment she awoke from her nap, yowling and weaving between Lucia’s legs until she made her lap available to be kneaded. Petting her feline friend was a better use of her hands than crumpling an otherwise pristine report, anyroad.

Aymeric’s arrival was a bell and a half after Lucia, as it turned out. There was no worry of her presence being startling, as even from her spot on the couch she could hear a brief conversation in the entryway somewhere between the clacking of boots and the muffled shifting of coats. An announcement on her behalf, as far as she could parse.

When he rounded the corner into the foyer half dressed for more arid climes than Ishgard and beginning to shiver faintly, the buzzing in her mind quieted with another mystery to fixate on. Old habits kicked in, and she read him from head to toe.

Though his head was free of a hat, the telltale blemish of fading marks across his forehead outlined the headwrap he had likely worn all the way to the door. She recognized his blouse as one more familiar to Thanalan, long sleeved and light and wrapped lightly in a vest gifted by Raubahn for wear during his visits. His pants and boots were of standard Ishgardian build, however; likely, he only dressed warmly as far as his coat fell to make his business in Thanalan more comfortable.

His expression was somewhere between a grimace at being unkempt in front of company and a smile at her presence as he gave the end of one sleeve a tug. “Lucia! I beg your pardon, you find me only just returned from Ul’Dah—”

“Get settled in.” she gestured at Duchess kneading biscuits in her lap. “I am off duty—and clearly not going anywhere.”

Though the journey was short and lightning quick, Lucia mapped the path Aymeric’s eyes darted, from where she had gestured to the report at the table to the unopened wine beside it before looking back to her. On at least some level, he understood the Game was afoot.

Aymeric’s virtue was also his vice: he will do the right thing—the just thing—every time, even to his own detriment. But Lucia knew that he also trusted her judgment. When she bade discretion on a matter, he deferred to her expertise.

That, and he hated being unclean to the point of distraction. The longer he hovered at the door with pleasantries, the more it had become apparent in the way he idly picked at his hands.

“Of course. My thanks—and a thousand pardons,” he said, ducking his head as he crossed the foyer and took the stairs two at a time.

Lucia had given herself a full hour and a half to think of what to say before he got here. Aymeric gave her another quarter bell by performing the same hasty but deep cleanliness that the military demanded, with an extra five minutes for him to dry and dress. Two hours, all told. 

It was still not enough time. 

By the time Aymeric returned to the foyer, all casual attire and damp curls, Lucia still lacked the words to present her findings. All that time, and she had nothing but an apology mangled in her throat.

“What were you doing in Ul’Dah?” she asked instead of explaining anything. 

Any hope of him already knowing had been dashed the moment he came home, but it was rendered clear as day now: he was still happy.

“Ah,” Aymeric sighed around a smile. “Business- both official and personal. I had thought to reopen trade discussions with the Sultanate. Discussions all around have been delicate, but enthusiastic. Progressing.”

It was so like him not to mention what he had done for himself unprompted, assuming a lack of interest. A habit he had not yet fully broken, but one he had indulged in far less of late.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Lucia croaked, “And the personal…?”

“Oh!” he startled, but lit up at the chance to explain, “Do you recall that trip I took to the Forelands? Some three moons back?”

Lucia remembered. After a jaunt in the Forelands with Uthengentle, he met her at the airship landing wearing durable working clothes and positively smudged with dirt from head to toe. At the time, she had thought to congratulate him on actually using some of his vacation time of his own volition and only half in jest, but ultimately walked away with more questions as to what it had been for. 

She knew what had become inevitable when he had only offered an explanation of, “I was in search of a star sapphire. I worried I had taken too large a piece but Uthengentle assures me he will use the excess in other pieces.”

At the time, Lucia had not asked him what it had been for. A part of her had already known—or perhaps, had hoped. It had been a happier prospect, at the time.

“Uthengentle finished my commission. ‘Tis a beautiful thing, really—should all go well, I expect you will have ample opportunity to see it often.”

Seeming unaware of her stomach falling out from under her, he gestured to the stack of papers she had brought with her. “But it seems I have more business to yet conduct before the night is over. What have you brought to me, my friend, that you would do so out of armor and for no pay? For all you complain about my lack of freetime, yours is precious little better.”

Alas, their friendship was an ongoing tug-of-war between both their propensity for overworking. If Aymeric was not discreetly scheduling days off for her, Lucia was liable to rearrange what duties she could to give him at least a few hours free a week, if not a full day. 

Lately, it had been getting better—for both of them, due in no small part to the efforts of one Warrior of Light. An ally playing both sides of the war, as lover to one and sister to another but loved fiercely all the same.

An ally that might well have betrayed them both in one fell swoop. If it might not risk weeping, Lucia would laugh at how thoroughly they might have been played.

“Physikal reports.” she said, at last freeing herself from Duchess’ leaden weight and handing Aymeric the papers. “From the incident in the Tribunal.”

An ongoing mystery that had taken a back burner by necessity during the Dragonsong War. Small mercies and damnations, then, that there was no finger drumming in the wake of peace. Not for the righteous, at least.

A principle that Lucia had until recently believed shared by the Warrior of Light. 

But righteousness does not demand silence from its victims. Righteousness was not complicity. 

And yet—and yet—there were gaping holes of information. Stories that did not align. Lucia’s mind bounces wildly between conspiracy and betrayal, unsure of which would wear on her more but knowing which one would unmake them both entirely.

Lucia studied Aymeric’s face as she shooed Duchess off her lap and rose from her seat to join him by the hearth. There had been a lingering smile in his eyes as he had taken the report. A lightness he was halfway through storing away for the sake of work as he delicately unfolded the pages.

He was the Lord Commander again before he had finished the first paragraph. If she wanted to play a morbid guessing game, she imagined it was somewhere around the phrase, “healing magicks interfaced poorly with deeper wounds—suspected use of Dark Arts at play.” 

She would also guess at what point he caught the reason for this clandestine turn-in: Serella Arcbane found consorting with a heretic’s corpse on Tribunal grounds four hours prior to incident that occurred inside. Association suspected, extent unclear. 

“Aymeric—” Lucia croaked, dropping all pretense of titles and duties.

In that moment, such things were too heavy for her to carry. The flames in the hearth were too tempting in that moment; if she had been holding the reports, she might have thrown the pages in the fire just to be free of the tension. Old habits crept in from the most bent and beaten parts of her. Not even in Borel Manor was she safe from the shadows of the Empire, not when they so darkened her heart.

“You know what it means that I am here off duty. No other has seen this report,” she continued, and though her words were evenly measured out, tested carefully on her tongue, it still felt as though she were rambling. “None that yet live, at least.”

His expression was inscrutable. Like he was trying desperately to mask how his heart threatened to break. Like he was failing, for all his spectacular effort. 

Far from emboldened but already there, Lucia leaned closer and whispered, “One word…one word, and this never leaves this room.”

Because she would take the secret to her grave, if Aymeric asked it of her. Over country, over duty and faith and god she would, if he but bade it of her.

But she knew that he would not. He would not even consider it. In a way, it was why she had asked it of him in the first place: her loyalty to him was always rewarded. His honesty, the compass that pointed them north.

And how bittersweet her reward was this time, when he did not so much as glance at the fireplace, eyes never leaving hers.

“And what would we be burying? A half-truth that would never come to light. We would bury victims, and any chance they ever had of justice with them. We would be no better than those who came before us.” Aymeric said, passionate and predictable.“If the crime is one of unconscionable evil, we must needs condemn it—even should the transgressor be our closest kin. I said as much to her, once. I meant it then as much as I mean it now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, because she felt she must.

It wasn’t her apology to make, not really. Not when the perpetrator might well be someone they so dearly loved. Not when, just this once, her hands were clean. Knowing that did not make her feel less dirty for the work.

No rest for the righteous and all that.

“You have done naught that needs forgiving.” he replied, his tone crisp and curt in that way it was at the war table.

Tapping the papers lightly against the palm of one hand to hastily straighten them, Aymeric folded the reports along the crease she had already made for them with quick, decisive movements, and held the stack out for her to take after only a moment’s hesitation.

In spite of herself, Lucia flinched.

“You will submit this as a cause for concern on the morrow, Ser Lucia.” he ordered. “You will formally request leave to pursue this case, and I will formally assign you to investigate it—which you will. Thoroughly. What evidence you find, you will submit in its entirety. Regardless of what your findings are.”

“Yes, Lord Commander.” she said in a voice of warped steel.

Lucia was reminded that he had gotten a commissioned piece when he began to fiddle with a small velvet box in his hand. Were it not for the way his expression crumpled, she might not have left him to his grief.

Even knowing the answer, her voice bent toward something softer as she asked him, “What did you commission?”

After a moment to swallow heavily, he gently set the box down on the table and said, “Depending on what this investigation yields…nothing.”

When he removed his hand, he hooked his thumb into the meet of the box’s hinge and lifted the lid to show Lucia the contents inside.

Nestled between layers of velvet coated cushions, adorned with a large but immaculately cut star sapphire wrapped in gold like a stained glass window, was a ring.