#but since X'vahl still has no idea where they are

[zylphiacrowley]

Erenwol week Day 6

He asked me if I would take him to meet my family. I explained the situation. I wasn't sure how he would react after everything that happened, but it seemed important to him. Important enough that he still wanted to go, and while I always dread the thought of going back home, it was easier having him with me… I know my mom would've loved him.

Thanks of course to @zeloinator for the prompt list. ♥

[zylphiacrowley]

Oh so THAT part of Stormblood was hell for X’vahl lmao. What did he think when he could first breath under water?

Oh no, most of Stormblood was hell for X'vahl. He grey up in Gyr Abania and to be quite honest he had been actively avoiding the area. Had WoL business not brought him back there he would've continued to avoid it. The mother of his children, M'likki is from a sort of satellite tribe of the M tribe around that area as well. Stormblood is when he learned that his mom had died about 5 years prior and also that M'likki had taken their kids and moved them somewhere without telling anyone so he now has absolutely no idea where they could even be. The whole area just dredges up horrible memories for him so he was really just numb and coasting through a lot of those parts of Stormblood. The rest of the scions really had to just guide him everywhere after that since his heart and mind were really just… not in it at that point. He has a really good memory but he has trouble recalling a lot of what was actually going on around him then. To answer your other question though, he hated his first breath under water. Every instinct in his body was telling him that he was drowning as his lungs filled with water, but he never did. He's still not used to being able to breathe underwater, and it's still a dreadfully painful experience for him. He knows he can't drown now, but the instinct that he should still hasn't left him.

[zylphiacrowley]

/falls into your inbox

6 PLEASE!!!!!!!!!! (for x'vahl)

For Pre-Dawntrail WoL questions!

OH HOHOHOHOHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEEE! Okay! (this is going to be long because this is my wheelhouse and it's my favorite thing to write/create content about... in case that wasn't abundantly obvious by now)

6. how does your wol feel about romance? are they a hopeless romantic, waiting for The One, or are they more casual? do they believe in soulmates?

X'vahl is, at his core, a hopeless romantic wrapped in layers of fear and anxiety caused by past failed relationships (mostly one specific past failed relationship that broke something inside him so bad that he still hasn't fully healed from it). He thought he had found The One when he was 19 until everything went very bad very quickly and he got extremely depressed about it for a long time (This is the whole thing with M'likki and his kids that I feel like I mention a lot). After that he would end up in his first casual relationship with the co-captain of the ship he boarded for Thavnair in his early 20s (this is also when he realized he was bisexual). He actually didn't intend for it to be as casual as it was, since the idea of a casual relationship hadn't really crossed his mind before that point but he was also feeling super guarded still and wasn't ready to commit his heart to another person. It helped that Zhen (the aformentioned co-captain of the ship) basically laid it all out for him that as soon as they made port at Radz-at-Han, X'vahl had to disembark and that would be the end of what they had going on. It ended up working out for the both of them, and honestly it probably helped X'vahl since they ended on mutually agreed upon terms and not, you know, a complete disaster heartbreak (fun fact: Zhen is also the person who first put the idea of becoming a bard into X'vahl's head). When he was living in Radz-at-Han he fully embraced the idea of the casual relationship and had a bunch of casual encounter with different people with a strict "no-strings attached" rule. He never felt a sense of fullfillment from any of his relationships at that time, but he also didn't worry about having his heart shattered again and he was content to coast along like that. Of course, he eventually left Radz-at-Han to return to Eorzea where he got caught up in Scion and WoL business shortly after and the idea of any sort of relationship sort of fell by the wayside because he suddenly had Much Bigger Problems:tm:

All of that leads up to now! The star is safe, he finally has a chance to breathe again for the first time in a long time, and when Tataru realized he was acting slightly different whenever he was around Erenville, or whenever someone mentioned him, she actually figured out he was harboring some feelings before he really even realized it… so she took matters into her own hands. Despite thinking they could just have a casual thing though, now X'vahl is suddenly wrestling with the fact that he's realized he not only has feelings, but he has them real bad and all that anxiety and fear that he thought was in the past has suddenly come back to hit him again and he's terrified about all the ways it could go wrong.

So uhhhhh, tl;dr: X'vahl is very much a hopeless romantic, he's not necessarily waiting for "The One" (even though he might've found him), he tried the casual thing and it was… alright he guesses, and he is undecided on if he truly believes in soulmates, but he finds the concept endearing.

Thank you for the ask my friend ~! ♥ This is completely my jam so I'm glad I got to answer this question for him. ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡