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umbry-fic · 2 years ago

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The Tomorrow With You

Summary: Every year, without fail, their moults arrive.

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters: Colette Brunel, Lloyd Irving Relationships: Colette Brunel/Lloyd Irving Rating: G Word Count: 1884 Mirror Link: AO3 Original Post Date: 17/06/2023

Notes: This is a XC1 AU written for Day 1 of Colloyd Week where both Lloyd and Colette are High Entians. They're called the bird people by the Nopons because of the wings on the side of their heads! No XC1 knowledge needed, here's some additional context: Homs are the equivalent of humans in this world, everyone lives on a giant titan called the Bionis and Alcamoth is the city of the High Entians located in Eryth Sea. Pure-blooded High Entians have really long wings (see: Kallian Antiqua) while some Half-Homs have shorter wings (see: Melia Antiqua). Other Half-Homs appear virtually the same as pure-blooded High Entians, and have the same lifespan: three to four centuries. It's my personal headcanon that Half-Homs with shorter wings only live half that, but I'm not sure if this was ever unconfirmed/confirmed by the game... There's a longstanding social stigma towards showing signs of Homs' ancestry (i.e. the shorter wings). High Entians with longer wings have been shown to be able to fly in the game... Once, but still! Therefore they moult, because I say so.

The title is from a track in the XC2 OST! If you know, you know.

~~~

Humming under her breath, she reached for a new patch of year-old feathers on the bottom of Lloyd’s left wing. They were noticeably more worn out, their ends splitting apart and their colour faded from a pale white to a dull grey. Not that she was surprised at the extent of the damage, given how often his wings tended to smack into hard objects from all the shenanigans he got up to on the outskirts of Alcamoth, where the city met the azure waves of Eryth Sea.

Lloyd barely moved when she closed her hand around the bunch, pulling them all out as gently as possible, revealing the follicles beneath, from which new feathers were pushing their way out as best they could. Once a month had passed, they would be fully developed, and his wings would look a lot less naked than they did now.

Just a few days ago, when his moult had only touched the very top of his wings, he had squirmed like a fish caught in a net. She had to continually remind him to stay still, knowing just how much it hurt when feathers were pulled out while she was moving - she’d made that mistake when he’d helped her with her moult a month prior. A burning pain akin to the times she’d accidentally caught her hair in the jamb while shutting the door.

“All done!” she proclaimed, carefully dropping the feathers into the wastebasket that she’d strategically placed in front of the desk before they’d started. Regardless of how neat she had tried to be, there were still some stray feathers scattered about, stark white against the wooden floor. A sole feather was kept safe on the nightstand, tucked beneath a book - a sister to the one Lloyd had kept from her last moult. “That sure took a while.”

He let out a small huff in response, slumping forward on the desk and showing no signs of getting up.

“You’re all tired out, aren’t you?” she muttered, rising from the stool she’d been perched on, stretching. Her back was stiff from sitting for close to an hour, focussed solely on locating every old feather and making sure Lloyd was as comfortable as possible.

She smiled to herself as she found that he had dozed off, eyes shut and shoulders rising and falling peacefully. Her father would be home soon, yet she didn’t quite have the heart to wake him up and send him home. She’d just tell her father that Lloyd needed to recuperate the energy to grow out all his new feathers. It was true, after all.

His wings were so large now. When they’d met, they’d both had tiny stubs that had barely classified as wings. Now, his reached past his shoulders to the middle of his back, and they still had room to grow. They were impressive to gaze upon, and her favourite pastime was to do just that, watching their minute movements that shifted with his mood. How they would droop just slightly when he was feeling down, how they flared out when he was excited, how he shook them out to catch the breeze when they ventured out to the reefs to watch shooting stars light up the night sky, falling from the heavens towards the earth to dissipate into drops of ether. Whenever she had the opportunity to bury her fingers in his plumage and stroke against his down, she could only marvel at how soft it was, rivalling the silken sheets of her bed.

The tips of hers brushed her shoulders. They had remained that length for the past two years, and would grow no further. A permanent marker of her half-Homs blood, setting her apart from everyone else. Practically a glowing signpost that would soon brand her back with a target, beckoning ire.

She didn’t need to be a prophet to predict the future that awaited her - she had witnessed it countless times. The sneers, the derision, the refusal to reach out… They had all been directed at other half-Homs before her very eyes, and even towards her father. All from a small subset of the High Entia, yet the ones who were the most vicious, violently lashing out at others just for being different.

Already, suspicious gazes were being turned on her.

Still, even with that knowledge weighing heavy on her heart, there was one thing that wouldn’t change.

Come the next year, and the next, their moults would arrive again, like clockwork.

And she would help him with his once more, as they had promised to do for each other.

~~~

His touch was painfully gentle against her wings. His actions couldn’t be classified as tugging - it was more like persuading her old feathers to vacate what had been their home for the past year, making way for the new. It made her shiver when he took the time to stroke their sides after a particularly difficult bunch, attempting to soothe the small bout of pain that would flare up. Treating them as something precious, to be treasured and protected, when to her, they were nothing more than a curse.

A sigh travelled through the air, shattering the awkward silence that had descended upon them, his fingers reaching down to trace the scabbed-over cut on her cheek. A souvenir of her encounter with some less than pleasant individuals in the gardens a few days ago, who’d had nothing but barbed insults to fling at her. She’d ignored it, long since used to the tiny shards that would wedge their way under her skin and tear at her - up until they’d dragged Lloyd’s name into it.

“Hey, Colette. Do you hate my wings?”

What…?

“I know it’s because of me that you have it so much worse. They don’t like that I spend so much time with you. If it wasn’t for me…”

It was the ugly truth, that the both of them knew, yet kept hidden under wraps, unwilling to face it.

“I am… Slightly jealous of them,” she admitted. They were everything hers were not. Having reached their full length a few decades ago, they stretched to his waist, covered in feathers so white that they could be blinding in the sun sometimes, powerful enough to propel him into the wide, blue sky.

“But I could never hate them.”

How could she?

They were the same wings she had cried into when she’d had to bury her father, far away from Alcamoth. Watching the casket be lowered into the earth of the Bionis, she’d wondered if it was truly right for a child to have to bury their parent, when said child could pass for a Homs that had barely reached adulthood, if not for her wings. He had embraced her from behind, his wings soft against her cheek as he’d whispered calming words into her ear, promising they could return here whenever she wanted to.

They were the same wings which she had watched grow alongside her own, which she had lovingly tended to every year without fail, so much so that she might know them better than her own. Knew which spots were sensitive to the touch, and knew where best to soothe, so much so that she could groom his wings far more proficiently than she ever could her own.

They were the same wings that had ferried them both into the skies, his arms steadily carrying her, ensuring she would never fall. They’d hovered so close to the starry heavens that, if she were to reach out a hand, she might have been able to scoop up one of the sparkling diamonds that hung in that vast black canvas. Together, they had watched the shooting stars fall, countless of them, slipping through the gaps between her fingers to flit across the peak of Alcamoth, their vantage point allowing them to witness the reflection making the waves of Eryth Sea come alive with a myriad of colours. The wind had ruffled the feathers of her own wings as his continued to flap, keeping them in the air, as she admired the way the starlight played off their snowy white.

And besides, it’s not like she could ever bring herself to hate any part of him.

“If you had to ask me whose wings I hate…” she heaved a sigh, folding her hands in her lap as she dropped her gaze to the floor. “It would be my own.”

It felt wrong to even say it aloud, like she was desecrating the memory of her father. She had never blamed him or the mother she had barely known, yet sometimes even she could not help but wish she had been like some of the other Half-Homs, born with wings that would grow to a length similar to that of a pure-blooded High Entia, with minute differences only the most skilled of gazes could discern. It was tiring, to walk out the door every day, steeling herself to face an unbreachable wall of hatred that bid her shoulders slump more with each day that passed.

“That… I can’t accept,” he whispered, his lips tenderly brushing against the peak of her wings, caring not for their off-white colour or how patchy they were now, the new feathers still young. It made her melt against him - against his steady warmth and the broad wings that draped around her, that would always do their best to protect her. “There’s not a thing I’d change about them. They’re beautiful as they are.”

The unwavering belief in his voice, and the gentle way he handled her wings, always capable of warming her heart, could quiet even the loudest voice that occupied her head, telling her that they were worth nothing. His agile fingers had begun to untangle the complicated knot of emotions resting in her chest - and perhaps one day, he could fully unravel it.

His wings drooped, his head bowing slightly. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you this time.”

“Nonsense,” she whispered, turning to press a kiss of her own to the wings she loved so much, watching a small shudder make its way from top to bottom, feathers quivering slightly. “There’s nothing for you to apologise for. You can’t be there all the time. I’m thankful, for everything you’ve done for me already.”

He’d stood up for her so many times, the expression on his face darker than even the worst thunderstorms that raged over the sea, causing powerful waves to crash into the shore. Enough to make anyone shut their mouths instantly, skulking away in terror.

No matter how bright the flames of indignation on her behalf burned within Lloyd, he was still just one person. He could not change the entirety of the High Entia race overnight. But every action, she was certain, had a small effect in turning the tides.

Perhaps the time when those like her would be treated favourably would not arrive within either of their lifetimes, long as they were. Regardless, just as when she was younger and had fewer scars across her heart, she continued to believe in one constant.

Come tomorrow, and the day after that, and for however long she lived, even if it ended up being only half of Lloyd’s lifespan…

She would spend each day with him.

#fanfiction #one shot #tales of symphonia #colette brunel #lloyd irving #colloyd #colloydweek2023 #day 1: wings #mmm am late but finished it #the images seem to be refusing to work but i give up ;-;#the final piece in the trinity of xenoblade AUs!! haha this made me crack up

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