#Yeaaahhhh this is one I recommend you read on Ao3 just for the clearer formatting

[idalenn]

Day 14 - Telling

Venat finally allows Lillian to heal her following their previous bout, and emotions leading up to their fight come spilling out. (6.0)

Major characters: Warrior of Light, Venat, Meteion, Hythlodaeus Note: Descriptions of injuries, spoilers for a particular character death in Heavensward, First Person POV, some funky formatting in one section if you're reading this on Tumblr/on mobile/not Ao3.

Full text below the cut

Grimacing, Venat lifted her arm to allow me closer. Along the ribs of her robe was a line of smeared rust-brown, a light copper tang wafting from the red wetly dotting along the centrum like teardrops soaked into parchment. As I crouched there, wondering, of how I might preserve her dignity in front of Meteion and Hythlodaeus, if such a need even bore considering, given what I’d learned of the ancients, the sullied white cloth rippled before my eyes and parted to allow me perceive the damage’s full extent. A sour smell struck my nose; I tasted humidity on my tongue.

An inflamed laceration, burning red, ran along the cage of Venat’s chest. Thick webbing of veins pulsed in the borders of the damaged flesh. Remnants of an attempt to heal, I suspect, disrupted by ancient and primal will. From its mouth wept drops either a sickly yellow or were tinged with scarlet. The corner of the swollen lips leaked a thin rivulet of blood.

To think the combined aether of Emet-Selch and Ramuh had proven so effective.

Gerolt would be giddy. The Adjudicator had split the ancient’s seemingly invulnerable hide easily as any and inflicted more damage in the breadth of a heartbeat than my magic and fists combined across our spar. Had I not made my intent blatantly obvious at so crucial a moment and therefore warned her to turn the attack…

“Were you to gawk at mine injuries,” Venat hissed. Strain had thatched a nest in her voice. “Remedy what you’ve dealt me as promised.” Shade from Elpis’ trees cut across her form, blackened the shadows pooling beneath those piercing eyes hobbled with pain. And, for me, revulsion.

White aether surged around my palms. From sternum to back, the trail of damage dealt me sung reminder of the telling blow that had almost claimed us both. My own prodigious aether had been too poor an amount. An entire field’s worth had withered into dust to preserve me, trees, fruits, beasts, and insects all. Healing this scratch should be comparably small in cost – should being the operative word. “Stand back,” I urged the others. Meteion hurried behind Hythlodaeus to clutch at his robes. A kinder hand than mine patted her head. Facing Venat, her skin veiled in moisture, I planted my hands on the wound to a murmur of distress.

Close. Close, I willed, exhaling as the wave of fatigue struck heavier than I’d predicted: enough to feel a bell’s worth of hiking across the Shroud.Nothing so intense as to necessitate drawing more aether from the land, however. Venat’s flesh rolled back together forming a hill stained red and bruised before a healthy tone seeped in, the path cut by the Adjudicator filled solid and smooth as the webbing of veins dissolved into the new, unblemished skin. A sigh of relief left Venat’s mouth.

“Never in my time have I suffered a wound similar. From the minute to the incapacitating, none have ever refused my touch.” Though her gaze looked to the trees above, I could still feel a touch of its held malevolence. “Not once.”

“The staff I carry negates the body’s ability to heal itself.”

She swallowed, eyes refusing to meet mine – understandably so. “Yet you are capable of mending what I cannot. How is this?”

I offered a shrug. “White magic differs from yours, I suppose. As I’ve come to understand, the means of healing through conjury are rendered ineffective by certain powers, as is the body’s own methods of which conjury is intended to bolster using small amounts of aether siphoned from the land. White magic, however, steals exorbitant amounts instead to alleviate the strain on the body, often requiring their wielder’s own aether – their life force – in tandem.”

Venat nodded. “You avert your weapon’s inimical nature by providing an alternate means to sustain separate from the process it inhibits.”

“Precisely.”

“At the cost of your own life.”

“’Tis only a risk to overdraw from myself. Your wound poses no threat.”

She tapped two fingers against her knee. “But if it were deeper. Higher, perhaps. Skewered a rib and ripped it from me; you would fare poorly.”

“Well enough. Farce or no, Elpis is abound with aether for my use, so unless we were both dying –” I stop myself. With her wound almost gone, the last I needed was to become agitated. “Capable of saving another from the clutch of death, strength enough so reliance will imbalance the star: that is white magic.” When my hand finally dimmed, I gave Venat’s wound one last inspection, prodding where the flesh had previously smiled. No bruise; no mess. A satisfactory work.

“But not all. Not all can be saved.”

Venat cocks her head at the speaker. A familiar lump coalesces in my throat, and I pause. The sun has dipped low on the horizon, turning the sky orange as flame. A frigid wind had begun to gnaw. In hindsight, I should have demanded Hythlodaeus drag that child away.

“Meteion?” He asks.

“Because in doing so,” that warbling child’s voice finished, “…you would have died.” Her words brought the world to a crawl. No longer was I breathing air so much as inhaling a clear, viscous syrup, a sharp pang in my airway as it started to tighten. Will you never listen to what I ask, about keeping yourself from my head?

I was there again, kneeling on the mosaic stones, his chest rent and weeping warm over my hands. Smile splattered with red.

“His death is on my hands.” The words escape before I think to stop them.

“Come now, that’s less than correct,” Hythlodaeus attested, and wrongly. “As I understand events, the wound dealt him would merit a grievous end to any struck and you were unawares of the assailant. Any one of us would do the same for our friend.” (Ancients would gladly sacrifice themselves for comrades.)

“No. That’s not it, not at all.” My voice had become a whisper.

“Enlighten us, then.” Venat’s gaze had softened away anything resembling a once baleful mien, the corners of her eyes crinkling as though she were about to break into sobs. By the Lover, it was pity. How dare she look at me so after what I’ve done. Were I less claimed by despondence those eyes would be left in bloody scraps for the soil.

“Because I looked at my friend… I looked his wounds as he bled into my hands and I, for the first time…” The words were bile in my throat. Hot tears intruded into my vision. How it burned, the cruel pragmaticism.

“I realized the value of my life.”

All of it came rushing back in a blizzard of dragon wingbeats and clamor of armored limbs on stone, our pursuit across a bridge of brick and mortar and centuries of prayer, eyes trained in every direction but the one we were attacked from. Fragments of his shield skated across my face cutting shallow lines from which only one dripped crimson, my ears still ringing with his shout of alarm. I was blinded; my vision naught but a taut white thread, but I could smell him burn. Bleed. Cauterizing. The stones shone white where bones should have glistened, where crimson should have flown.

“Help him!”

“What are you doing?”

“Have you lost your senses? Why have you stopped?”

“He’s gone pale…”

“Was she caught, too?”

But… if I continue…

“Move her aside! Lay a hand here. And another here!

“Lord Haurchefaunt!”

“We must away.” “Go. Azys Lla awaits.”

“We can’t let them escape!”

“Lillian, he’ll be lost if you don’t act.”

“Find someone more willing! Anyone!”

“Oh, do not look at me so…”

For a long time, the only sound was that of the wind; leaves and branches, blades and flowered stems, hair and cloth, in and out. Loud was this ancient world far removed from mine, but those around me offer quiet enough. It is underserving for the wretch I’ve been.

“I weighed his against mine: what he could accomplish against the Ascians; the forces he would muster against the dragons; the support, resources, and might he could supply Eorzea, his family’s combined assets; beyond Ishgard, beyond Garlemand, the weight he might help us carry; his capacity for compassion, love, duty and honor; willingness to sacrifice for the good of all who lived and breathed.

“And when I could not bear to weigh anymore the logical part of me continued on counting. Analyzing – until there was nothing left. Then again, and again, until we’d hammered out our list a malm long of advantages he might contribute in my stead.

“And I deemed my own survival paramount to his.”