#duscha vesnasch

[fistsoflightning]

25 - at least i have you

silver lining: a consoling and hopeful prospect; “every dark cloud has a silver lining.” Tehra’ir & audeo, 1.8k words. Shadowbringers, post-Mt. Gulg but before the WoL wakes up.

The world is back at the brink, and seven ghosts (?) have nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs as they wait for something to change. Hopefully in favor of them getting their bodies back...

The light pouring down from Norvrandt’s skies was almost blinding in its radiance.

Not that the sky being too bright was anything new. Tehra’ir had been here for the same five years Thancred had, traveling under the pearlescent colors of those Light-filled skies that had given Ryne sunburns when they raced away from Eulmore with her. It screwed with his sleep schedule and his temper so badly that the Exarch—or were they finally calling him G’raha, now?—basically had blackout curtains invented just so he could go back to his nocturnal habits whenever he was in the Crystarium for long enough. Apparently, the Mystel of the First had no nocturnal inclinations like the Keepers of the Moon of the Source did—that, or the ones who did were already long gone. The sky being too brilliant to look up at was normal.

But Norvrandt had got its first taste of night in a hundred years not over a few short months ago, starting with Lakeland and spreading like ink poured onto parchment to the rest of the land. The sour-sweet colors of the sun rising and setting every day, the near-eternal blue sky full of puffy white clouds, the shade of night and the stars that danced in its return. The change in weather, from eternal stillness to days of sweet rain and nights of cold wind. Tehra’ir and the others nearly cried when Reese brought up the vanguard and tore a rift in the Light they’d been working for ages to vanquish, even as ghosts. In the wreckage of Holminster Switch, Lyna looked up in awe, so childlike for someone who Valdis said might have been nearing a full century of life. Alisaie all but tackled her brother in joy. The other Scions, having already heard the news, weren’t so dramatic in their revelations, but they still took a quiet joy in knowing the skies were beginning to clear, even knowing what the price paid was.

And now the light was back. The Lightwardens were back, slowly taking their friends and turning them into Norvrandt’s doom. All because G’raha’s stupid plan and Emet-Selch’s timely but unwanted intervention led to the Light within breaking free.

Not completely, at least. Tehra’ir tried to tell himself that at least the five Warriors still standing were left with their bodies mostly intact, at least it wasn’t the end yet. He’d seen a fair share of people turn, and seven hells was it not pretty. Ryne, the absolute angel that Zaya and Thancred did not deserve but had as their almost-daughter anyways, had enough of a handle on her newfound strength to keep that from happening.

Enough to keep them alive, but not enough to stop time forever. Not even an Oracle reborn could cure the afflicted—if she couldn’t, then it was likely there was no cure, A’dewah said. He had been looking for a cure longer than Alisaie had been ready to suplex G’raha, forgoing his own wellbeing to chase it, and even with both of the stubborn idiots working for the Inn at Journey’s Head the only lead was Minfilia, the one who stopped the Flood in its place.

The skies were bright, there was no cure, and seven almost-ghosts gathered at the same place they had been for weeks, a clumsy half-oval around Zaya’s bed.

“How are we all feelin’?” Syhrwyda asked this question every two weeks, while they were still (technically) alive and meeting at the Wandering Stairs for whatever meal of the day it happened to be. If the Scions were drifting apart in their search for salvation, all the more reason for the seven of them to stick together.

Beside him, Valdis snickered, biting their lip to keep from laughing as A’dewah sat down on the foot of Zaya’s bed with a squeak that sounded a little like a deflating balloon. Not that Tehra’ir would say that to his face; he was nicer than that, and the poor man was already stressed out of his mind, even as a wandering spirit. “Transparent and intangible as always, Wyda.”

A’dewah, who Tehra’ir thought was having a small crisis (as was unfortunately usual for him), twitched. “If I knew I was going to be—be stuck in one piece of clothing for the rest of my days, I would have asked G’raha if the Crystarium had any better coats. I hate not being able to close this thing.”

Syhrwyda wheezed, watching A’dewah fruitlessly fiddle with the open part of his coat. “I’d have asked for something less purple, myself, but what can ye do.”

“Well, as long as you aren’t feeling any stranger than usual,” Duscha rumbled, lowering himself to sit on the floor. He looked a little silly, but Thancred had dragged his chair over to the window and was currently fast asleep in it, as uncomfortable as the Pendants’ chairs were. Tehra’ir thought Duscha would have looked just as silly trying to cram himself onto the piddly seat anyways. “Not that we can do much about any alterations.”

“Speaking of alterations,” Elwin said, tapping his finger to his cheek like he always did when thinking, “Thancred was smart to watch Zaya this whole time, considering their whole… everything… started right after the Well, huh.”

A’dewah gave a wheezy laugh. “I think, um, there’s a lot more to it than that.”

“You have to be blind not to see it—and even Y’shtola knows,” Syhrwyda snorted. She looked up and over Tehra’ir’s head to the open window of the small Pendants room, where Thancred had finally worn himself out from fretting over Zaya. Tehra’ir had, frankly, been a little worried; the man was too prone to overworking and repressing himself, especially when it came to the matters of Zaya and Ryne. Stupid, soft man.

“They’re really in love with each other,” Valdis said with a sniff. “It’s sort of sickening.”

Tehra’ir reached up to lightly squeeze Valdis’ shoulder, looking over at Thancred with the barest hint of jealousy settling in his chest. “They deserve it, though. Th’ daft culls’ve been through ‘nough.”

“Still wanna shake them a little for giving Ryne such a hard time, even if I get why they were having so many damn problems talking about it,” Lumelle grumbled. Next to her stool, Elwin reached up and patted his sister’s knee, mostly because he couldn’t reach her shoulders.

“If only we could,” Valdis sighed. “Watching them was emotionally taxing. They owe me.”

The reminder that they were practically non-existent was a bit harsher of a wake-up call than Tehra’ir would have used, but their resident black mage had never been one for smooth landings. Syhrwyda’s eternally sunny demeanor dimmed, her arms crossed over her chest.

“So… one to ten,” Lumelle mumbled, fingernails cutting into her palm, “How fucked are we?”

Tehra’ir didn’t have it in him to bring up Lumelle’s swear jar, already full of gil on the counter back home. She owed the swear jar plenty, and somehow so did Elwin, who must have picked up the habit at the knees of the Crystalline Mean workers, but he decided it didn’t count when they were facing off against tasks of Calamity-sized proportions. Let the two kids curse. They might never get to again.

“Fourteen,” A’dewah croaked, the godsdamned pessimist—but if anyone knew just how screwed they were, it would be him. He studied the few records that detailed changes in the Lightwardens like a hawk, spent nearly every second he could at the Inn or at Spagyrics trying to save someone regardless of if they were dying to injuries or on the verge of becoming someone’s next nightmare. It would have driven Tehra’ir insane, the nightmares and the memories. The knowledge that you were feeding poison to someone completely innocent because the alternative was worse. The inevitability of it all.

“We’re already dead,” Valdis said, smiling thinly. She always spoke in a way that made telling jokes and serious statements apart, but she’d never looked so resigned before. “How much worse can it get?”

Syhrwyda laughed, all sharp edges and no warmth. “We’ve all seen Ardbert by now. We know how this ends.”

Familiar enough story. Ardbert and his companions tried to save their world, nearly ended it, jumped to the Source after being tricked by an Ascian to come and kill them by abandoning their bodies. Cursed to wander as ghosts, except the other four gave their aether, their beings to Minfilia in order to halt the Flood. Ardbert was the only one left, now. Tehra’ir couldn’t imagine the years of haunting your home without feeling ill.

It was probably for the best that he couldn’t see them. Or hear them, for that matter.

“At least he got to come home,” A’dewah mumbled into his hands. His face paint would be all smeared, if they weren’t a little intangible at the moment. “Though—well, maybe that’s worse. Forced to wander here without being able to be here.”

Tehra’ir shrugged. “Speak for yerself. I’d consider throwin’ me stabbers to th’ sea if it let me see ol’ Limsa one last time.”

How strange was that, wanting to go home to the city full of pirates and thieves. Far better than the sugary sweet smell of Eulmore and its meol, at any rate, and at least there he could find his sister and the Guild waiting for him. Could expect Jacke to throw his arm over his shoulder and give him something to laugh about—the First was awfully lacking in anything that wasn’t gallows humor.

Gods, he never even got to tell Jacke. Spent so much time futzing about with his feelings that he comes to terms with them on a whole separate world, two years too late to spill all the words he’d been leaving unsaid.

aybe we’re not going to make it home ever again,” Lumelle murmured, knees pulled up to her chest and hair frizzy with knots, “But at least I’m here with you guys. At least I’m not alone.”

“Aw, Mel,” Elwin said, a little teary-eyed. “When did you get all soft and gooey? Did Alisaie do something while I was busy in the forge?”

Lumelle flushed bright red as a mirror apple, nearly falling off the stool as the rest of them started to smile. It’s poetic, in a way and if someone was a shitty, tragic poet; it starts with one person bringing them together to become eight, and it ends with one person losing the other seven.

(“At least I have you,” Zaya had said, in the dark of the Dutiful Sisters as the Crystal Braves stomped past. “At least I’m not alone.”)

“Ye’ll always have us,” Tehra’ir said, even as Lumelle and Elwin started to wrestle each other, a paladin and her pint-sized brother. “No matter what.”

[fistsoflightning]

                                                 SAY CHEESE!

[fistsoflightning]

take me through the night! fall into the darkside we don't need the light! we'll live on the darkside i see it, let's feel it, while we're still young and fearless let go of the light! fall into the darkside

                            || S H A D O W B R I N G E R S ||

[fistsoflightning]

16: imprimatur

prompt: lucubration || masterpost || other fills || ao3 mirror

word count: 1083

Louisoix has a habit of picking up strange people and bringing them back. These two, unlike Thancred, might have something to them that Y’shtola’s interested in.

Sharlayan is, from Y’shtola’s experience, not a place where you oft see new faces—or perhaps it was just too common to find the children of your former teacher or the friend of a peer around each and every corner. The general isolation from Eorzea as a whole didn’t help the perception she had of it, either, considering the lack of any travelers or outside interventions. An annoyance, at times, when it seemed like even Sharlayan’s halls lacked what she needed.

Perhaps that’s why when Louisoix and Thancred returned from a short reprieve in Limsa nearly everyone had flocked to the Roegadyn and the Hrothgar that had journeyed back with him. Both of them stuck out even in Sharlayan’s rather diverse halls—even Mikoto had noted how odd it was to see a Hrothgar outside of Ilsabard, much less one of Duscha’s age, and Syhrwyda’s height had her sticking out of any crowd and crouching down to talk with others, much to Mistress Kokoye’s dismay. Both held tomes on their hips—arcanists, by the looks of it, so Y’shtola hadn’t much reason to talk any further than pleasantries and small questions with them, considering where her expertise lied.

That is, until she found out their fields of study.

A chilly night, by all records; most of the students Y’shtola had known to stay out later than recommended had already retreated to the comforts of their rooms, surely feeding their fireplaces with enough wood to last the night. Even Urianger and Moenbryda had moved their studies somewhere warmer, both bidding her a good evening as she passed by, surprised to see her in the Studium’s campus as they were. With the winter, she’d had to return—that night, she had merely been in search of a box of tea, to aid with the essay she’d been writing, when she caught the hints of rustling pages and mumbled calculations near the doors of the study hall.

“You’ve missed a few equations for the aspect of the host’s aether here,” a low voice says, and Y’shtola pauses in her pursuit for tea. “And the bit here, for the surrounding aether; something isn’t quite right.”

She pokes her head around the edge of the doorframe, and surely enough she catches a glimpse of mint green fur and honey golden hair, hunched over a table as the windows lightly rattle with the blizzard outside.

“And here I’d thought the two of you had been intending to turn in a few bells ago,” Y’shtola calls softly as she quietly makes her way to their table, the glow of aether-powered lamps turning the air into quicksilver, the shining mint green of Duscha’s spell fading to a light grey as it touches their quills. Duscha’s back stiffens, tail going straight, but Syhrwyda merely straightens out calmly, stretching her arms upwards with her quill in hand, very close to dripping ink over her hairpin.

“We were,” Syhrwyda pipes up. “But then I finished up me brew an’ got an idea, an’ Duscha wasn’t willin’ to go t’ bed without me, an’. Well.”

She waves her hands about over the array of papers and tomes the two of them have laid before them; in the mess of Syhrwyda’s slightly blotted pages and Duscha’s comparatively pristine ones, she catches sight of a few geometries more complex than what she’d seen even Urianger attempting, with his mad idea of reconfiguring carbuncle matrixes to fit other stones. Among them are tomes with titles she hardly recognizes (well, save for On the Lifestream and its Possible Applications in Spellcasting; she’d managed to get Miss Masya to loan her that one more than once, and its contents were well worth the struggle), including several on the more… restricted sides of magic, if she recounts the slight argument she’d overheard the other day while she searched the library for Lyse.

How curious.

“Is this it, then?” Y’shtola leans over Duscha’s shoulder to pluck one of the pages from the table, holding it up against the silver glow to see the shimmer of Syhrwyda’s mythrite ink, laid out in the pattern of…  

What in the seven hells, Y’shtola thinks as she peers a bit closer at the shapes. Though it has the same landmarks of complex summoning arrays—complex! Syhrwyda had hardly been a student for two years, not nearly long enough to manage this from Master Aisibhir’s teachings—there are none of the proper attuning points for any gemstone that Sharlayan might stock. It almost resembles something torn from the Allagan study students’ tomes, but even more twisted than that—she takes one look back down at the table and sees a tome on summoning, the same one that Y’mihtra had requested that morning.

Consider her curiosity peaked.

She grabs one of Duscha’s next, stepping just out of their reach as she traces the lines—so unlike any arcanima the professors had taught, so strange compared to what might grace the contents of any other tome. Despite his neat writing the slant and script he prefers makes his much harder to parse than Syhrwyda’s, but Y’shtola catches something that is distinctly unrelated to aspected aether and arcanima alike among the mess and squints.

“I’d thought your thesis was on carbuncles and what adjustments might be made to their arrays for variations,” she says after a moment of silent awe, pointing at Syhrwyda first. “And yours—” she turns to Duscha, not even thinking to revel in the utter shock on his face, usually so stoic that she might as well mistake him for a gargoyle. “Thancred said you were thinking upon how unaspected spells might be aspected to change their purpose! So what are… these?”

Neither of them look too interested in responding, frozen in their seats as she steps back into reach, but she rustles the papers once and takes a curious look at the rest of the pages they’ve scattered across the wooden table—gods, there are a good deal of them; she wonders just how far they’ve journeyed into their ‘proper’ fields of study if this is their alternatives—and that seems to give them an idea.

“We can explain,” Duscha says, voice higher than usual, followed by Syhrwyda practically collapsing with a whine of “Please don’t rat us out to Miss Masya, I worked hard t’ get access to the upper levels of the library.”

Y’shtola hands back their pages with a small smile, sitting next to Syhrwyda. Perhaps she’d have to put more investment into learning about her peers than she’d originally thought.

“Do tell.”

[fistsoflightning]

seven items: list seven items your character keeps on their person/in their inventory at all times.

bonuses in the captions!

tagged by: @windupnamazu and @whitherliliesbloom!!!! thank you carmela for both the tag and giving me the inspiration to go wild with edits. thank you kiwi for the extra tag! i went, as you may say, feral.

tagging: uhhhhhhhhhhh i don’t know too many people who haven’t done this BUT i will double tag the mom squad plus a few ppl >:3 @windup-dragoon @sati-ffxiv @to-the-voiceless @verbroil @winduphaurchefant @ofthesilverlining @stars-bleed-hearts-shine @aethernoise @holyja and YOU! open tag!!!! if you see this and do it, please tag me!! i love the idea of just having a list of random items your character just always has... which is why i went crazy.

[fistsoflightning]

updated shadowbringers pictures for my wols! they all get a glow up except dewah who decided to dye his hair purple.

little descriptions below for fun/info for future asks!

FIRST ROW: TANKS

SYHRWYDA MAETITYRBWYN: a rowdy rogaedyn warrior that could probably be your mom! she’s real peppy and tends to indulge in a little fun despite being, like, fourty years old. her axe, sunshimmer, is probably the size of your head, so watch what side of her you’re on! if you see her pulling out her grimoire, you’re in trouble...

LUMELLE DE LIPINE: the teensy elezen paladin that started adventuring when she was like.... thirteen for ‘being thrown out of ishgard for supposed heretical thought’ reasons. her sense of justice is generally well used, and her loyalty is unmatched by any of her friends! she tends to get a lil stuck in her head, and she’s also like.... a baby. second youngest of the group? you found her. also; do not mention stardiver around her or she will scream. she hates doing that dragoon jump and is deathly afraid of heights. her brother, elwin, can attest to that.

SECOND ROW: HEALERS

DUSCHA VESNASCH: our tired hrothgar archon scholar/dad.... he just wants to take a nap with eos. he is a hardcore bookworm and would rather write a letter than talk to people in person just cause his eorzean is Too Formal. his fairy friend, eos, loves to just. sleep on people’s shoulders and heads, so if he feels comfortable around you, you’ll know by eos’s reaction to you! though he’s real laid back and tired, he can still stand for himself if you give him a proper gunblade! his training as a child wasn’t for nothing.

A’DEWAH TIA: an anxious miqo’te white mage that really, *really* cares for your wellbeing and tends to forget his own! his magic feels like fluffy clouds and warm sunshine, and his smiles are just the same! however, please don’t spook him because he will jump through the ceiling and scream like a child. he’s real meek and very wound up, but can still pack a punch in battle. he vastly prefers white magic, but his innate ability for red magic isn’t something he’s going to pass up if it helps keep others alive.

THIRD ROW: MELEE DPS

TEHRA’IR NAPHTO: the charming rogue ninja miqo’te of the party! he’s real sneaky and can twist your words without you noticing, but will absolutely never do that to friends; its his code of honor. if you need someone to eavesdrop for you, he’s your man! it’s pretty simple to find him; just make a loud call out in hawker’s alley stating you’re selling tuna miqo’a’bobs and he’ll be there in like... ten minutes. yell around six pm, however, and you’ll just disturb his daily meditation with his katana and he’ll probably dive into the ocean after it.

ZAYA QESTIR: my main wol and the reckless au’ri monk of the group! they’re an avid bird love, tend to run out into thunderstorms and turn themselves into a lightning rod, and really love adventuring! you’ll probably not meet another person as rambunctious and unable to sit still as them, though they do turn that down a notch after shadowbringers! their skillset encompasses kriegstanz, song magic (to an extent), and archery, but some rumors tend to circle about their devastation with a greatsword...

FOURTH ROW: RANGED DPS

VALDIS OTOEL: our optimistic viera black mage! well known for her tricks around eorzea, and known to few as their saving grace; her knowledge of aether and magic is pretty good! she could probably be an archon if A) she went to sharlayan like duscha and B) weren’t such a gremlin. as it is now, her nickname ‘little spitfire’ is for her blunt charm and penchant for fire spells! however, her fire magic spans much further than traditional black magic. perchance have you heard of... the flames of rebirth and blue magic?

ELWIN DE LIPINE: the babbiest baby.... the even teensier lalafell machinist sibling of lumelle! he may be tiny and look like a kid, but he’s A) on par with machinery with cid garlond B) a perfect shot with his own guns C) the main little dude to go to for prosthetics and D) knows how to handle money unlike his sister lumelle. his smarts only add onto the charm of his trusting nature, and he’s always!! cheering!! for you!!!!!! if he doesn’t have his machines and guns on hand, however, hand him a starglobe and he’ll show you the night skies in midday! he loves being an astrologian and is forever thankful for his surrogate father/lumelle’s father gifting him one of very few astrologian soul stones from his time in sharlayan...

[fistsoflightning]

14: hero’s journey

prompt: part || masterpost || other fills || ao3 mirror

word count: 4813 (i DONT want to talk about how long this is)

You are not simply a hero, but this is still your journey, and the parts of you are waiting along the way. All you have to do is take them.

DRK shenanigans, anyone? Note: distinctly not canon-DRK things ahead, hopefully still keeping the same emotional sort of weight? Also, second person POV! There’s no spoilers because this is just me going off on a tangent :P

Someone had noted—an age old teacher, perhaps, memories inlaid deep onto your crystal—that grief causes the greatest oddities to occur. Simulacrums formed of it weren’t so uncommon as one might be led to believe with a surplus of aether and enough love turned sour.

You just weren’t expecting to be one of them.

Like wildfires, you expect to fade back into the darkness of the abyss easily enough; the hands of such a young knight wouldn’t be able to bear being stained so pitch-black, you think, not when she glows with Halone’s blessing and something even more. Her hands leave freezer burns over the facets of your crystal, frosty fog forming as she keeps training, keeps hunting down more and more aevis until there’s nothing left. Even Ishgard’s worst blizzards fail to stand up against the winter storm of her fury.

Must be some sort of rebellion, violent and reckless as it is. You sit back (as much as a distant flame in the abyss can, anywho) and wait until the worst of her temper fizzles back into snowmelt—which, obviously, doesn’t happen like you assumed, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, now would you?

(When you hear the truth of it, crystal fed enough blood and aether to reach out further than just from the little knight’s pockets—when you hear betrayals and exiles and my brother is dead because of your Braves, Alphinaud, what more do you want from me, your realization shows itself in coldflare and dark light, wrapping itself as best it can around someone so blessed and “loved by the gods” as your ward.

Though you need her more than she needs you, it still doesn’t hurt, you think, to cover her armor in a veil of darkness, even when her shield sings of nevermelting ice and wraps light around her anyways.)

But eventually, it does; Lumelle—you find out her name from a man willing to jump in front of inquisitors and magical spears alike for his beloved friends—her enraged grief bubbles off into a quieter sort at the beginning of Ishgard’s new dawn, and you are left by her bedside when she falls into a sleep after destroying a wyrm with grief that, really, wasn’t all that different. (Besides the whole eternal lifespan and eyeballs of power, and the wyrm’s sibling being eaten by Lumelle’s ancestors thing. That had thrown you for a loop.)

And oh, you expect it to end there, your tale that of accompanying a girl who didn’t need you so much as she needed closure; fading after protecting someone so bright would be an honor.

...

(But there is no rest for the righteous, now is there?)

...

Your next chapter opens in the palms of someone already acquainted with bloody hands, and though the little time spent out of Lumelle’s hands has left you wanting for your senses yet again, it takes hardly any time to figure just what this one’s deal is. 

(Her hands shake whenever she sees her party’s astrologian—so small, her head is practically the size of your ward’s fist balled up—and the thought of Vylbrand sours every conversation like milk left to rot. Y’shtola utters the word crone and the spike of earthquake panic you both feel lets you understand the jumble of misremembered nightmares that still haunts the warrior so far north from the place.

When she almost drowns herself in the memories, asking the sea to take her back into her arms, you are the one screaming the entire time—not because she is taking you with her, no, but because you can feel the summer breeze and hear the quiet pond rushing about the housing district looking for her, and you do not know what you’ll do if her death reignites Lumelle’s tempered anger.

The scholar cries out her name just as she falls too deep; Syhrwyda, you remember—you’ll force her name onto this damned crystal if you have to—and the breath of relief you sigh when the white mage forces the ocean to spit her out is all but audible.)

You expect her to let the little supernova cut her down, cleanse burns with blood and old aches with a trip into the abyss, because if Lumelle’s aches were screaming freezer burns then the gentle warrior’s are a quiet erosion. Even dripping blood can wear down a mountain, with enough time, and with a Calamity come and passed, the proof burned onto her skin, it is more than enough to see this mighty willow fallen to the skies opening up and pouring a tsunami’s worth of suffering in retribution.

Both you and her close your eyes when the axe comes swinging down, kneeling on the ground in pain. You do not expect it to be swift or painless like the rumors say of guillotines and execution, but you hope it is anyways.

And yet, and yet, the blade does not come.

(Part of you wonders: would the girl shrouded in fallen moonlight have done the same thing, if she had seen what Syhrwyda had seen? Would she, knowing that the choice was submission or death, have still seen her friend and ally in the woman that burnt her childhood with naught but a single incantation?

It matters not. There is no turning back time, and she has decided to give her friend a boon.)

It is not metal that comes, but a flurry of stars calling a lost sailor home instead, so potent that her magic seeps into your crystal as she collapses against your ward’s shoulder, whispering I’m sorry, I can’t, I won’t like little wishes made upon falling stars. You don’t know if you imagined the croaked it isn’t your fault or if you simply missed the mumbled movements, but Syhrwyda’s aether settles in time with the stars bursting across her skin and you know that your time with her will come to an end soon.

When she sets your crystal by a small crystalline lamp, you hum in amusement, letting yourself slip down into the abyss once more as the watery blue light ripples off the bookshelves.

…

(Who are you?)

(No one of consequence.)

…

You find yourself more confused than before when the scholar picks up your small crystal, facets gleaming brighter than before but still dulled from decades of being frozen under Ishgard’s snows; nothing about him sings of the same pain like the last two. He pockets your crystal easily and you wonder just what use he’ll find from you if he has no abyss of his own to draw from, no font to gather his strength for him to find.

(You miss how quiet he is in the din of everyone and everything else, tuned up to near painful when you open your eyes again. You miss the words he reads, the spells he crafts, the spared glances to his usual tome. Nothing about the man betrays it; hardly anything he does seems to suggest even a hint of regret, grief long since frozen over and forgotten of a home he’d long lost.

This was never an easy road—traveling down into the abyss and to rise back up again—and you do not expect easy wards, but the scholar—)

Even deadly waters can be calm at the surface, deceiving depths holding something stronger, and when he rises to meet the Illuminati and the (not their) primal, you start to see the signs of something lurking in the water and strain to open your eyes, drained as you are so close to Alexander. 

(You should have noticed how he balked away from poisons, preferring to sit far away from the rogue; you should have felt the gentle ripple when Mide mentioned Alexander’s purpose and wondered more.

It is too late for regrets, but it is not too late to stop this man, whose hands are too gentle and weary, from falling further into something he did not truly want.)

Are you daft, you whisper, and it’s not the best thing you’ve ever come up with but it’s the first words you’ve truly spoken to be heard. Like the rest, you expect your words to fall on deaf ears—stubborn people, the ones that have found you—but this time the scholar stops. Lingers, the precipice of a typhoon brewing up from the bottom of his soul. Do you truly think this will work?

“Not completely,” he says, his voice a quiet rumble as his small carbuncle shimmers and shakes its way into existence; part of you wishes you were strong enough to do the same just so you could shake the fluff out of this man’s brain to where it belongs. “But it might, and even the smallest chance...”

What of your friends today?

You don’t know what you expected, really; the scholar clams up and so do you, a connection cleaved in two as he walks away from the hand of the giant primal, stone in hand, and you are too exhausted to try and pry his heart open wider. Convincing him to let it all spill forth is harder than convincing a rock to move on its own, so you don’t try.

This time, when you fall back asleep atop a book with a soft leather cover, you desperately hope this is the end of it.

…

(Did you know them, too? Did they lead you to me?)

(In a way, yes.)

(Then you can stay, for now. Just… keep quiet.)

…

And of course, it never is.

It’s hard to describe your next awakening as anything but a bolt of lightning straight to your center, with how much aether rushes through your crystal and into the abyss. Too fast, too quick, like a flame burning too hot too soon. From freezing to the fiery depths of hell, you think incredulously as you reach out, looking to just who might be so dangerously close to tipping too far.

You don’t expect to find the timid white mage staring down at your soul crystal, red eyes and all.

(In a way, perhaps you should have known it would happen; the man was too damned reserved, all flower petals and no bark, the look in his eyes when he saw someone injured too intense for simple worry. He hates bloodshed yet makes his career in it all the same, and you’ve been held by Lumelle so tightly that you felt his magic—summer’s night bottled into a cure, blooming flowers pressed over scars, and you think nothing could be kinder than the way he loves.

Shame that you forgot that sometimes kindness is forged in the abyss.)

You’re sure he doesn’t mean to keep your crystal at all—hells, he sets it at the bottom of his satchel before he goes running off to join the fray in the same place that nearly killed him, the damned martyr—but you get taken with him regardless, and you see just how badly he’s dealt with it all. You don’t retort as snarkily as you might have with Duscha; your current ward is like paper thin glass, and you worry that if you push him he might break into pieces so small not even the sun’s light could find him.

In fact, you’re not sure what will happen if you make yourself known at all. He doesn’t seem strong enough to handle the idea that his guilt is making a simulacrum manifest.

(If you truly wanted, you could make him a fine dark knight. Teach him how to take his love and turn it into strength and protection stronger than anything the realm’s elements might give him, no matter how loved he is by them. Stain this white mage in dark.

But you see his dreams, sometimes—you never had found your way into dreams before, but with someone practically bleeding their life aether onto you, a simulacrum fueled by memories and pain, it’s hard not to have new experiences—and his hands are always coated in blood. His own, someone else’s, his mother’s, his father’s…

You choose not to take him through the abyss. You don’t want to know if he’ll still be there when you walk out.)

Finding someone that might be able to help someone who very stubbornly doesn’t want help is… a lot harder than intended. There’s not too many people… happy, with your ward; not after Baelsar’s Wall, and the man that Lumelle sent flying. You faintly remember a name—Caelestis, or something—but you care little for details and more for solutions, so you keep peering outwards and looking as best you can without fully peering into their heads.

That is, until that someone comes running at the white mage like a teal tulip some sylph chucked at you with the force of a demon.

(He introduces himself to everyone as Haruki, but you can’t help but call him Ruki after one too many trips into A’dewah’s head—Dewah, he says, and you don’t know much about Seeker names but you know that it means more to your ward than it does to anyone else—and you think you can get him to help, even if A’dewah himself is trying to avoid him like the plague. 

Especially because he’s avoiding Haruki like he’ll die if he doesn’t.)

It takes a few minor illusions and a trip to the Steppe (you didn’t know how to do these before A’dewah, you think as you practically lead a trail of hints from the Enclave to the tree A’dewah’s stuck himself in) but Haruki’s always been smarter than he might look (you still can’t get over the peacock feather of a mess his hair is) and eventually, eventually, your plan comes to fruition.

You don’t try to listen when they talk, but the rush of relief in A’dewah’s aether and the slow transition of summer bottled up tight enough to crack glass to the light warmth of, say, a greenhouse in full bloom tells you all you need to know, anyways.

(Doma is freed, soon after, and the Warriors are called back home, to Ala Mhigo’s war, but you look one last time out to Doma and see the last moments of A’dewah’s goodbyes, and of course it’s Haruki he tells last. His eyes burn like a solar eclipse, and you think if it weren’t for his son—so small and brave, callouses already on his fingers—he’d come back with you.

You think it might be puppy love, somehow, but you take one last look at what you know and think that maybe he’s just tired of being left behind, of being the last one. Might be love, might be wanderlust.

It doesn’t matter. You still have to leave, even if it hurts.)

On the ship’s journey back through the Sirensong Sea, A’dewah finally acknowledges you, in a way.

“Thank you,” he murmurs to no one in particular as he ties up his hair tighter. His eyes aren’t reddened from crying anymore—just the unfortunate lot of his mother’s eyes being blood red by nature—and you think you can rest, now.

So you do.

…

(Don’t you understand to call for help?)

(I can manage.)

(So sayeth the Weapon of Light.)

…

From one firebrand of a caster to another, you think as your crystal gets put into Valdis’ open palms—you learn her name early, this time, instead of just before the climax of the story—and though her aether is quiet you know well enough that it doesn’t mean there’s nothing hiding behind it.

(It’s the same sort of longing for something long past, you remember. Duscha’s aether had a similar balance to hers, even if Valdis is mostly umbral shade and hardly a hint of water among the flames she pulls into form. Where Duscha was restrained she is explosive, and you don’t need to look too hard to find the root of the issue.

The thing is: you’re too exhausted.)

You’re lucky she doesn’t fight closer to the front line, like Lumelle or Syhrwyda, because you can hardly summon a shadow at this point—perhaps you were played the fool by A’dewah’s tears into doing too much, not saving enough.

But then you look at Valdis and think she might be fine on her own, eyes still lit up and hopeful. Spitfire in her hair and embers in her eyes, already burning like a flame that knows how to rise from her ashes already.

There’s something to be said about youth, maybe, and you sigh as you close your eyes and hope to wake when she needs you.

(The thing is: she doesn’t need to.)

…

(... Hmph.)

(If you’re expecting an apology, you’re getting none from me.)

(I do not need—)

…

Your next venture leads you into the hands of someone so astrally aspected you don’t know if you can even summon the strength to peer outwards. Their aether and yours conflicts so greatly that it’s hard to tell if the abyss is flaring up or dying down, really, but you try regardless.

You will eternally be glad you do not have a face, because the pure shock when the face you see is one that was supposed to be long dead is not a face you’d ever like to see.

Lumelle had been your catalyst, and the little machinist before you the cause; you didn’t think he’d survived, somehow, even if you saw the monk that supposedly fell with him. He’s brighter than you’d thought he’d ever be, as close to the abyss as his sister was, and then you realize—

He truly doesn’t need you. His eyes still gleam on their own, not shrouded by something buried deep. If Duscha’s abyss was well hidden enough for you to mistake it, there can be no mistake here.

When he keeps your crystal close, anyways, you close your eyes again, thinking that perhaps this time you won’t be needed like before.

And for the most part; he doesn’t.

(There are times, surely, when a speck of darkness flickers into the light that fills his aether, but you hardly need to look at it to tell it’s over something silly. A flame that will flicker out soon enough. You don’t lift a finger over that.)

In a way, his hands are a restless reprieve. You cannot sleep, truly, because if you do you don’t want to know how much your crystal’s facets will fade, but there is nothing for you here, either.

So. You watch.

…

(But. Don’t you want?)

(I already want enough. I can get by.)

(Doesn’t mean you should.)

…

The rogue plucks your crystal from Elwin’s bag, a shadow in the night, and you hardly realize the change until you’re set by a pack of crystals. You nearly think to panic—what disaster do you have to reconcile now, tired as you are—but then the rogue whispers like he already knows.

(Maybe he does. Every rogue you’ve seen through other eyes has always been a bit sharper than they make themselves to be.)

“Take a breather,” he hums, flipping his daggers in the air and watching them glint in the dim moonlight. You think you might know his name, uttered once or twice in passing, but you’ve hardly begun to rest from your time in Elwin’s bright hands and aether that it’s slipped you by once or twice already. “Ye’ve helped us out. ‘S high time we pay back, hm?”

I do not do this for payment, you sigh, but his aether is the easiest of them all, really, more comfortable than even Valdis’ despite the light chill of it. He doesn’t respond, merely whistling as he walks along the metal pathway—Garlean territory, and he’s so calmly strolling through it?

You don’t choose to rest, even though you could, and keep an eye on the man anyways.

(It’s worth the trouble, you think when you shroud him in shadows, narrowly avoiding the gaze of some wisened soldier who knows the tricks of the trade. Even if nothing’s gained in return.)

…

(They’re...gone. They’re gone, gone, what do I do now—)

(Breathe. You’ll find them again. You always do.)

(But what if I can’t this time? What if I find them only to lose them?)

(You won’t.)

(How can you be sure?)

(Because you want to find them. I’m still here, aren’t I?)

…

There isn’t so much of a rest between leaving Tehra’ir’s palms and falling into the monk’s own, really; not when the rogue collapses alongside Valdis and the man with the eyepatch after some reverberating call that shook even you, incorporeal as you are. If you’d a physical form, the pain behind your eyes would be overwhelming; the sensation of being ripped from one’s body must be horrible, but even more so being torn from the very aether that keeps you.

Either way, the Elder Seedseer drops your crystal into their hands when she comes from the infirmary with a grim look on her face.There is something so familiar about this new bearer, aether so tempestuous and yet… calm. Leaving you contented and wanting all at once.

You don’t know what use you might be to them, either, but if you belonged in the hands of your past seven bearers then you are at home in theirs, lightning crackling from their skin to your crystal’s surface with great ease, for two non-metallic things.

(There is nothing I can do, the Seedseer murmurs and the sharp ache that immediately takes over the dull pain in their head echoes to you and oh, you understand more than ever now what you must help resolve, head spinning as the abyss flares and rages around you.)

You are there for everything after; when they flee to the Steppe, when they hole up in the empty house, when they take Ochir and fly across the mountains until Lunya calls them back home. Your crystal is usually hidden away in their pocket, safe in the leather pouch and buttoned into the cloth of their pants, and never once do you feel ignored, sitting in mutual silence. There’s nothing to be said, really, because their loss is just as much yours.

Both of you grin when you finally, finally make it past the gates into the First despite the horrid circumstances you have been brought to resolve, because it brings you both one step closer to finding them again.

(At first, you think they’ll be just fine without you, that you might be prudent to fall back dormant once more in face of the terribly draining light. At first, it seems like the others might just be a day’s journey away. The Exarch may be hiding things, but if the Scions are scattered then so too are the wayward Warriors; nothing so difficult as pulling souls back across the rift, yet.

Hah. When has anything ever been so simple?)

The journey is the hardest it’s been out of your eight travels, really; whether it be from the Light or from the constant confusion and grief that they struggle to pull from you do not know, and you keep your eyes open when they cannot—especially after Malikah’s Well.

(You are not the one fighting—never have been, even on that odd occasion that you’ve been able to force your way out of the abyss—but in Eulmore you see the flying eater’s wings seconds before they come crashing down on your bearer’s back with talons and when you reach out, for whatever banal reason, it is not darkness that springs forth.

At first, you think it a trick of the Light, because the last time you saw this shield it was back when you were still convinced you were ephemeral, but the next time you reach forth your ward’s wounds are healed in a burst of crystalline lilies.

You are not so stupid as to think this is your own strength, but they have not been with you for so long that you can’t tell what else it could be, what could be more than the others you have traveled with. 

Oh, how blind you were.)

Here, down in Amaurot, it’s harder than ever on them but the easiest it’s been for you, and when they start slipping you have to drag them back to their heels again, lest the Light breaks free and both of you end up dead. You don’t have anything else to give—you do not have Lumelle or Syhrwyda’s inhuman strength or the healer’s prowess of A’dewah or Duscha, too incorporeal to give support like Tehra’ir or Elwin and too loud to stay as quiet as Valdis—but you are there and that has to be enough.

(If Zaya themselves is not whole enough to be worthy in that Ascian’s eyes, then you will find the missing parts that make them whole and bring them home, because in your eyes there is nothing more than them and the little family you’ve somehow managed to pass through like a hand-me-down, and if you and the friends that remain are not enough to guide them through Hades’ abyss then one of them will be.

And the funny thing is; you do, because the missing parts of their soul were the storm in you.)

The final days of Amaurot are harrowing; you are there when Zaya nearly falls to a bird demon, of all things, and you are there when the tempest of aether above a simulacrum of Emet-Selch’s world nearly shatters you into a million stars. It is less you taking the reins and more you standing by their side, the shadow in the light of falling stars that pushes forward when they cannot.

You think Ryne and Y’shtola can see you, can see the glow of seven crystals at Zaya’s side, but it matters not when Emet-Selch still refuses to take reprieve of the abyss and see the merits of something different from what he knows; all that does is that you are by their side, a shade in a city of simulacrums.

(How funny is it, that in his grief Hades dipped into the abyss just as Zaya did in theirs?)

You don’t remember much of what happens afterwards. There is a blur of light, a man’s voice—seven voices you recognize as the abyss flares and takes you back, because there is no space left here for darkness, not now. You expect to die, somehow, because you’d been fighting for so long in a place that threatened to swallow you whole and keep you there even if you followed Zaya resolutely, Hades taking you in his grasp and shattering you just to prove that they are nothing.

There’s a moment of clarity—when dark overtakes light once more—and you take the chance to stretch yourself out, to cover as many people as you can tell are here because Hades’ claws glow with something terrible and you will not lose anyone now, not when you’ve found yourself in them. Even Urianger, even Alphinaud, even Thancred, who is yalms and yalms away from Zaya—all of them have become too precious to lose, too beloved to let be harmed, and if Hades’ form is large then you will become the event horizon that swallows him.

(If you disappear here, it will be worth it—you have served your purpose as a shield, gouged on aether and memories as you are, and if you can give them even a moment more the price of your existence, as much of a simulacrum as you were, it would have been worth the trouble. 

If Hades wins you don’t know what you’ll do.)

But he loses. He loses, and you go home as small of a flame as you were when your journeys began.

And when all is said and done, your crystal ends up on a necklace of thin chain and leather, held close to Zaya’s breast. Dark lightning crackles over the shining facets, finally polished to its prime like it was all those years ago when your last owner died; even then, you don’t know if you can ever come back again, really, exhausted and drained and frayed as you are.

It matters little, those ifs and maybes.

(“No matter where you go,” the gunbreaker says, and you can feel Zaya’s soul warm, cracked as it is—or maybe that’s yours, feeling a bit like your own promises are being voiced through his. Ardbert, the bloke, smiles from behind you, and the little part of you that knows exactly how you and he are similar grins wildly. “I will be there, guarding your back.”)

When they need you next to pull them from the blackest of nights, you’ll be there to see the beautiful dawn they bring in return. There is nowhere else for you to go.

…

(I’ll have to leave soon. Heroes don’t stay, you know.)

(Well, you do.)

…

From the depths of the crystal, a quiet light shimmers brightly, and you are reminded of home...

Action learned: The Brightest Dawn.

[fistsoflightning]

holy

on the subject of missing you.

                              gatheredfates’ [30 day WOL challenge] | prompt: sacred

aka. a’dewah ‘lilycat’ tia needs a Damn Break that i keep refusing to give him

summer’s cool night had fallen, and yet a’dewah was burning up like a matchstick in suzaku’s warpath, cradling into the heat as if he were a moth to the flame. his hands were cramping from how hard he was grasping at the front of haruki’s yukata—now more than halfway open like he insisted on keeping it regardless of what company he kept—and frankly, he couldn’t care less on how his fingers would complain later, pulling haruki closer so he could bury his face into haruki’s chest. 

a’dewah knows he’s been mumbling something into haruki’s sunset cast skin this entire time, eyes glazed over as he idly watches the flickering lantern light glimmer on his scales and sort-of freckles. haruki’s name, perhaps, in a pleading sort of way that he won’t remember as the sun rises—or perhaps a series of sacred ramblings spilling from a’dewah’s lungs that he couldn’t, wouldn’t be able to exhale in time to catch up with his mind.

not that he needed to. he can’t imagine either of them are terribly self-aware as of right now.

his red ala mhigan cardigan had long since been tossed to the side, haruki having given up at the white shirt and simply shoving his hands under it, tracing up a’dewah’s spine with his fingertips from the base of his tail like river water rapids in reverse. he trails kisses up a’dewah’s shoulder to his pulse, mumbling something soft and husky that a’dewah can’t catch before haruki continues until he reaches a’dewah’s jawline, firefly sparks lighting up a’dewah’s nerves as he holds him like something to be treasured, to be worshipped and needed and loved akin to a deity.

(and in some twisted way, maybe he is; one of summer and fireflies and ephemeral flowers meant to mark a path to victory—or maybe that was more befitting of the warrior of light, savior of eorzea, liberator of doma and ala mhigo and champion of ishgard. here he felt more human, like he’d never been twisted into fourteen and made into a weapon; here he was a’dewah tia, so deeply in love with haruki hagane and happy with this singular moment, saturated in midsummer air and night dew. not a hero, not a deity, but human, human, human—)

haruki kisses the shell of a’dewah’s ear, a low and rumbly laugh resonating from haruki’s chest when his ears unconsciously flick and lightly slap haruki’s face before he whispers teasingly into a’dewah’s hair—

…  

“a’dewah, do attempt not to fall unconscious onto your inkwell,” duscha, who is both a blessing and a curse to have as a friend, wakes a’dewah up with such a startle that his head slips from his palm and slams into the cabinet’s decades old table anyhow. faintly, a’dewah thinks of that one time duscha had been drunk and said… something about the library being “a place of learning, not napping”, mind still reeling and fuzzy from the false warmth of…

“shite,” a’dewah curses, slowly pulling his face from the cool metal that he so ungracefully face planted into. duscha mutters some incantation one second and then larkspur flutters into existence beside him, her dancer’s rings at the ready and wings glimmering with the candles scattered across the table. “that stings…”

as larkspur soothes the would-be bruise (accompanied by a small ringing of little bells, attached to the back of her little vest), a’dewah realizes that of course he’d been dreaming; still stuck on the first with half his being with no way to travel back and forth like zaya, of course he couldn’t have actually been in haruki’s arms. of course he was here, in the cabinet, surrounded by scholars who could pick him apart in seconds instead of the doman enclave in the midst of summer.

(but kami forfend, he so desperately wishes he was. he wanted the moonlight drowned nights, the gentle warmth, the stupid dances that all came with haruki and doma and home, left with only the letters the waiting the desperate need to just be done with musty books and dim libraries and pictures showing him what he could have kept close had he not been so fickle, so stupidly scared—)

“forgive my blunder,” a’dewah mumbles when y’shtola, urianger, and alphinaud look curiously at them from their seats, closer to the bookshelves so they might simply turn and pull a title from behind them. “i simply didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

“then surely you must have fallen ill,” duscha says teasingly—knowingly, seeing as how larkspur is snickering atop a’dewah’s arm, her silk-tied dancing rings fading into aetherial petals from where she’s dropped them. duscha lifts a hand from his piles of notes to poke at a’dewah’s cheek. “you’ve flushed a brilliant crimson.”

damn it all, he thinks as alphinaud fumbles his book while trying to melt into his chair. y’shtola gives him a curious, knowing look as he hides his head between his fingers, covered in ink and not glimmering light. why must my luck be so horrible?

a’dewah barely musters up the courage to plead, sorely wishing he could dissipate like larkspur could at her whim. gods, g’raha was just on the other side of this section of shelves—he doesn’t think he can handle being flustered in front of him, not when he’d easily tell lunya every little rumor and moment he could for her teasing wishes, so he takes a deep breath and says, “could we please forget it before i attempt to leap over the railings and book it?” 

“of course; however, i do believe you should see the contents of this tome,” y’shtola says quietly as she taps urianger on the head with her fountain pen, his wobbly smile quickly hidden as she passes one relatively thick title to a’dewah—which, of course, reads a treatise on love letters, as if that was something relevant to infusing crystals.

(he’d later find out the title was not, in fact, a treatise, but a novel eerily similar to a love story he’s heard before in a ballad—simply edited heavily enough to be… tasteful, if that could even be said.)

“my thanks, y’shtola.” a’dewah says as he carefully, quietly, slips haruki’s latest letter into the back of the book, hopefully out of y’shtola’s gaze despite her handing him a book with a title all too on the nose to be coincidence.

the picture from that letter—of mune and haruki showing off the fruits of a’dewah’s experiment with morning glories on the one garden’s pavillion—stays just out of sight under the cover of another book on crystalline infusions, their happy smiles fueling him as six scholars burn midnight oil til syhrwyda comes to wrestle them all to the second serving for breakfast.

[fistsoflightning]

[ARR]  «DARE» -> [SHB]  «audeō»

[fistsoflightning]

9: confidence boost

prompt: lush || masterpost || other fills || ao3 mirror

word count: 2256

It’s all fun and games until they all get invited to an Ishgardian ball. (Or; Lumelle has never liked anything to do with the high society of her hometown. A’dewah tries to help his friend out.)

Contains canon-divergence bits and bobs, notably pertaining to the Vault, because why not?

“Mel,” Auphine calls from the doorway, fiddling with her boots, maybe—A’dewah can’t quite see her fully from where he stands in front of Lumelle’s (extremely dusty, clearly unused) vanity, more focused on clearing up the mirror than anything. “What are you going to do about your face?”

“Do not repeat this back to Mama, but I,” Lumelle huffs, and if she weren’t standing incredibly still so that Valdis and Lunya can finish taking adjustment measurements for her dress A’dewah thinks her arms would be crossed firmly across her chest. “have no swiving clue what you mean by ‘what am I going to do about my face’, Auphie.”

Duscha raises an amused eyebrow over the brim of his book while Elwin giggles into his palm. No one really expected her to know—at least, among that of the Scions and her usual friends—but Auphine makes an exaggerated sighing motion with her shoulders as she stands straight.

“You know Mama’s going to want you ‘dolled up’, or what have you,” she explains. “And the other nobles—”

“If they give a damn, they can talk to the business end of Fragarach,” Lumelle grumbles as Valdis softly pushes her arms back down. Auphine sighs louder, and A’dewah didn’t think the little conjurer had that large of lungs on her; clearly he’s mistaken, by how her exhale carries.

“Do not tell me I did not warn you!” Auphine waves to Elwin as she leaves the room, the heels of her boots clicking against the wooden floor of the manor. Lumelle groans loud enough to wake Tehra’ir up from his slump against Zaya’s shoulder momentarily, eventually resting his forehead carefully back onto their shoulder, making sure not to press his eyes into the white of their dress shirt.

For his own merit, he does his best to ignore it while he carefully swipes the tube of lipstick across his lips, pausing when Syhrwyda leans over to pick up her hairpin from the vanity. She catches his gloss, too, when it falls on its side and starts to roll away; he could probably hug her for that. Damned glass vials and all.

“Mel,” Elwin says, his swinging feet tapping against the settee. “I think Auphie might be right.”

“...I know, but I—it’s not like I know how to use any of—of that stuff Mama dumped onto me when I came back. Most of it’s probably dried up, by now.”

A’dewah, for the curious bit of him that is right next to all the old cosmetics, opens up a pot of what likely used to be a scented lotion that smelled strongly of sandalwood.

What he finds is nearly rock hard. Well then.

“Dress’s done,” Valdis says quietly, Lunya snipping the last bit of thread hanging from Lumelle’s sleeve. The high house dress… looks incredibly uncomfortable for her, he thinks, compared to the normal surcoats and cuirasses she’d normally prefer.

“You all should get going,” Lumelle says, looking up at the chronometer. Nearly the seventh bell. “I… guess I’ll be here for a while yet.” 

“Here,” he says, scooting over on the bench to leave enough space for Lumelle to sit. He waves the closed tube of lipstick in the air when Zaya tilts their head in confusion. “I can stay behind and help her.”

Lumelle, for her merit, gives him a wary glance that might as well be screeching this better not end with me in a face of powders, but she trudges her way over anyhow as everybody else leaves Lumelle’s room. Zaya gives him a small wink before they turn the corner, pointing to the two corsages sitting at the end of Lumelle’s old bed.

“Why do you know so much about cosmetics, anyhow?” She sits with all the grace of a lion stumbling through a minefield, really, shaking the bench as she falls back onto it.

“I have three sisters,” he murmurs as he fumbles with the containers and pots he’s laid out before him, opening to check the colors and closing when he looks back over to Lumelle’s skin. He should have asked someone else—surely Lumelle’s mother, but Lumelle herself would not appreciate her mother fussing about. Perhaps someone from House Fortemps would have known of some cosmetics common to Ishgard, and a merchant. Aymeric, maybe; he looks like he would know his way around a few brushes. If he’d the willpower, Hanami would have worked, too, having lived in Ishgard long enough to count as one of them... even if he’d probably get his head taken off in the process. “My youngest brother likes to, er, contour, too. Hard to avoid cosmetic talks when most of your siblings, who’ve been very much restrained in their pastimes since forever, enjoy it? And…”

He taps the top of his cosmetics box; small enough to fit into the bottom of his satchel, beneath all the books and draughts he lugs around when he’s traveling by foot, all the pots and brushes neatly tucked away. He’d needed to buy newer paints and cremes when he’d gotten back from the First—a pain, seeing as he’d been without for long enough, but if the urge struck and he didn’t have his box refilled he’d probably see his anxiety spike—but none of them would match Lumelle’s darker skin either way.

“I, uhm, might have a bit of fun with this, from time to time?” The urge to wring his hands together is incredibly strong, but he fiddles with the latch on his cosmetics box. He hadn’t even really shown Haruki, now that he thinks about it—more a private pleasure than anything, now out to his friends. 

Character development, he thinks wryly. You will be fine.

Maybe he should have waited to put on the lip paint, he thinks as he helps wrangle the rest of Lumelle’s hair into a nice crown braid. All straightened out, strange compared to the very wavy-haired Lumelle he’d passed by not a few mornings ago, and the coarse texture of her hair rubs oddly against the pads of his fingers.

Now…

“Could you turn to face me?” He carefully opens his cosmetics box to pull out a few small brushes—making sure to set them apart from the brush he’d already used, a new pot of cool red paint, and a small jar of dark powder. “Promise I won’t, er, go overboard.”

“I trust you,” she says, even though it doesn’t look like she believes it, and she closes her eyes.

The quiet click and clatter of closing and opening containers fills the comfortable quiet as A’dewah brushes powders and paints onto Lumelle’s face. He has to remind her with a quiet tap on her knuckles not to scrunch her face, sometimes, but he can’t quite blame her when he’s trying not to sneeze the whole time from the dust that flutters about in motes, the sunset fading through the window making them gleam.

“You’ll keep these after I’m done,” he says while he finishes up the edges of Lumelle’s lip paint, the bright red perhaps a tad too bright for how much he’s put on; maybe he can wipe a bit of it off? “Sanitary things, is all. I—I don’t expect you to keep using them!”

Lumelle doesn’t say anything, not even a quiet protest, instead turning her head to look at herself in the mirror.

“This is weird,” she finally decides, after a few moments of staring intensely at the mirror. “Not used to my lips being… red.”

“Is it bad?”

He pulls out another tube of gloss—thank the Matron he’d decided to get a spare tube from that merchant in Ul’dah—and Lumelle sighs. “Not as bad as I thought it might, no. It’s just…”

Her brow furrows again.

“Here,” he mumbles, a bit awkwardly. “Put that on, and I’ll grab your earring.”

It takes a bit of fishing around in the drawers, unorganized as they are; he sneezes, once, when he opens it too fast and the dust goes flying into the air, but eventually he finds the slightly tarnished House Fortemps earring among the wreck that is Lumelle’s vanity. It gleams, still, in the fading sunlight, the red unicorn standing out among the dark grey metal around it.

“Done,” Lumelle says. He turns, and it’s… not as neat as he’d hoped, but it’s miles better than anything Vahno could have done, at any rate, so he presses the earring into her upturned palm among the light scars and smiles.

“There we go,” he murmurs, gently swiping his thumb to clean off some of the out-of-place gloss. “Grab the corsages for me, and I think we’re done.”

Lumelle nearly tumbles off the seat when she leans back to grab the two corsages, barely catching herself as A’dewah cleans up what he can—part of him nearly sets to cleaning the rest of Lumelle’s vanity, messy as it is, but he manages to hold back. For now.

He pins the (rather extravagant) brightlily corsage into his own hair, the light blue kind of blending into his hair, and hands Lumelle the white one to place in her own. Once she’s got it all pinned down—well, he has to brush a few leaves away from her face; Valdis must have taken the other smaller one he’d made—he stands, and waits for Lumelle to follow suit before he carefully grabs her wrist, ignoring the chill of the thin rose gold bracelets Auphine had shoved onto her sister’s wrist.

“Now,” he says, lightly pulling Lumelle closer to the mirror and stepping next to her. “Try striking a pose, or—or, uh, doing something that feels just a tad exaggerated.” He nearly leaves off there, looking a bit at himself and the light smudge in his lipstick before realizing what might happen. “WITHOUT getting your sword or shield. Please.”

“Killjoy,” Lumelle grumbles, but she takes one look at the two of them in the mirror, and her brow furrows deep enough that A’dewah feels a slight panic rising that the creme and powder on her forehead might crack. “Why with the poses, though. What’s the point?”

He has to think about, well, why he does the silly poses in the mirror before he can answer. “C-confidence? I—mm, actually,” he mumbles, spinning in a small circle and watching the skirt of his dress shimmer, fabric glimmering. Maybe he was right to let Zaya help Lunya design… this. “It’s… nice?”

“Nice?”

“Yes,” he says, a bit braver now. “Something that has nothing to do with being ‘heroic’ or ‘strong’, maybe. Just… plain and silly. Normal-ish.”

Lumelle hums just before she moves quick, pumping her fist into the air with her stance widened enough that A’dewah can see she’s still wearing her normal boots just beneath the hem of her skirt. She’s plastered a goofy sort of grin onto her face, brightened by the bright red lip paint and the light bouncing off the mirror onto her.

“There you go!” He sways about again, planting one hand on his hip and swinging his other arm out with the swish of his dress, nervously grinning as Lumelle’s eyebrows raise under her bangs. There’s a few moments of quiet, almost like time is frozen while they stand in their silly poses; a bit awkwardly, seeing how his tail has swung out from behind him and Lumelle had managed to throw her braid over her shoulder. 

It hardly takes a moment for them to both be laughing, A’dewah nearly doubled over because oh gods did he just do that and Lumelle’s hyena-like laughter isn’t helping, either. Something so preciously silly about that exact moment sticks in the aether, singing of first snows and brilliant sunlight as A’dewah tries his best not to wipe at his eyes. He lets his hands adjust the hems of his sleeves instead while Lumelle falls back into her blustery nervousness, cautiously wiping tears from her eyes before it grows quiet again.

“I am… not sure I feel any better about this.” Lumelle’s hands bunch in her skirt, eyes looking downward. “Part of the reason I left, instead of taking another trial by combat, I suppose. Never liked it all.”

That’s… about what he suspected. 

“That’s alright,” he soothes, smoothing out his own dress. He’s likely going to regret the heels in a few bells, but oh well. At least he won’t have to crane his head as much if someone does decide to talk to him. “Everyone will probably be, uh, a bit tipsy anyhow. They won’t notice you too much, either.” He looks to Lumelle through the mirror, watching as she tilts her head back up, the corners of his mouth tugging at a nervous smile. He’s… not sure if he’s assuring her more than himself, really. “If you get nervous, you can come find me, probably hiding behind a—a planter, or something. The lilies the Ishgardians like to use are, uh, big enough to hide the two of us. Failing that—”

“We find Haurchefant and let his enthusiasm distract everyone so we can escape. Got it,” Lumelle says assuredly, nodding to herself in the mirror and finally standing straight.

A’dewah bites the inside of his lip to keep from bursting into laughter. “Right.”

With one last little motion—one he’s seen her do to pump herself up before a mission—-Lumelle strides out to the doorway with a certain bounce in her step that she didn’t have earlier, stomping as she did to Lunya and Valdis’ measuring tapes, the corset on her dress keeping her from moving around as she wished. A’dewah smiles. 

They would be alright.

[fistsoflightning]

we can never go home

she does not ask, but by gods does she hope.

                         gatheredfates’ [30 day WOL challenge] | prompt: unspoken

i mean. there’s a no dialogue rule hidden here somewhere.

valdis learns quickly that people tend to fight for their homeland, and not for the sake of fighting; an idea which would have—should have been a given, had she the willpower to remember what happened to otoel before she’d already fought in four wars.

for instance:

for eorzea, tehra’ir and syhrwyda cry as the alliance marches onwards to castrum meridianum, having finally broken through gaius van baelsar’s solid grasp through sheer luck. they both hold their weapons like a lifeline, white knuckles and wild eyes as magitek bursts into flame and soldiers fall—not even the new weight of syhrwyda’s axe or tehra’ir’s cleavers slows them down.

valdis echoes their desperation in flares and freezes that stop even the mightiest colossus in its tracks, hoping that she might just see this foolish escapade end well.

(that isn’t to say the rest of them don’t have their reasons to be charging headfirst into the depths of the praetorium; zaya clutches an all too familiar earring of a sun and moon in their palm before the lot of them turn a corner, and both lumelle and elwin quietly pocket any tomestones or mechanical bits and bobs while they run along. larkspur hums softly in duscha’s mane; a’dewah seems to jump at every new garlean that looks his way but pushes onwards despite it.)

for ishgard, lumelle and elwin pledge as they cross the steps of faith, as they meet ser aymeric de borel and lucia for the second time, as they lose one another to poison and deserts and as they meet again by haurchefant greystone’s lucky hand. valdis is more than content to watch from afar as the two little knights march alongside a true knight, the azure dragoon, and a heretic until they march right into her path.

she greets them with a smile, a wave of her newest rod, and a small shower of warmth to soak into their winter-torn skin as they stumble into the dravanian forelands.

(when the archbishop escapes and their motley little crew threatens to tear apart at the seams, lumelle goes from a harsh snowstorm to eternal winter, her eyes hardening at the slightest movements just out of reach and paisley blue freckles gleaming in the twisted aether of azys lla. when lumelle and elwin cut down whatever primal zephirin has become, valdis thinks she hears a bitter laugh among all the holy explosions and clanging metal.

for the steppe, zaya signs in quick snaps as the naadam begins in full—except this time, valdis finds herself at the wrong end of zaya’s punches and kicks, flying far enough back to hear the crack of her leg as she lands, her staff holding up only because of the obsidian enforcements. furious stormclouds smother the morning sun out of existence, zaya’s greased lightning providing all the signals valdis needs to remind her do not go back there if you want to live.

when zaya returns to reunion with hien and his retainers, a’dewah, tehra’ir, and lyse trailing behind them, valdis pretends she does not notice them hugging oktai like he might disappear on them. she pretends that zaya, having not seen their home in over a decade and coming back to find a lordling attempting to mess with something sacred, something precious, is still whole, if a little cracked.

she greets them with her normal tired smile and conjured hot chocolate when they step into the shaman’s tent, shame and embarrassment weighing down their shoulders.

(in retrospect, valdis should have expected it; they’d been on edge since urianger’s little game and lyse’s entire ordeal and zenos in yanxia. even a’dewah had been loathe to follow lord hien’s lead, his motivations for a good cause yet so twisted by the need to take back his home by intruding on another’s; if valdis were more assured of her own convictions by then, she might have fought by zaya’s side instead.

after all, what kind of person willingly turns on their only semblance of family in the name of finishing all the fighting quicker?)

for doma, a’dewah whispers unexpectedly as zaya’s yol carries all of them to doma castle despite all the cannonfire soaring overhead. he’d nearly fainted less than six moons ago at the sheer thought of stepping foot into yanxia; valdis and yugiri spent nearly half the night searching for him once syhrwyda and duscha noticed he’d gone missing, finding him exhausted and shivering by the plum springs as if he’d known where to run. his scarred hands tremble when he touches soothing lilies to her arm, and when valdis manages to look up, he’s so, so damned weary that valdis tells him to go to bed with a small spell of her own.

it was the only way to snap him out of it before he’d started killing himself to mend the hurts of others, she reasons as she stares down some teal-haired oaf that’s been looking curiously at a’dewah since he started his rounds. it was the only path.

(it’s only later, when a’dewah stumbles over to mend valdis’ broken arm enough so that she might help out lunya and rjoli with some of the other wounded that valdis notices the pale steel hachigane sitting on his forehead. she’d seen the exact same pair… somewhere, in the house of the fierce just bells before, that teal-haired raen man setting them aside as a small boy ran to his side.

perhaps… she had misjudged, for once.)

zenos calls them beasts on more than one occasion, staring a’dewah and zaya right in the eye as he does. 

he is the first of few that valdis can hear proudly say for the thrill of bloodshed—for me and me alone without a single hint of remorse, and it makes her ill—not because of how he says it in undertones and gestures, but because she realizes—

how different is she from him? she has no home to fight for, not when her hair is burned crimson and her hands burst into flames; not when the wood grows silent at any simple flick of her magicks and the firebird in her head flaps its twisted, gleaming wings saying you need me to be something, without me you are nothing, without me you would have died a thousand thousand times over—

(she fights for herself, but she will never, never admit it.)

and when finally, finally, zenos falls for good, valdis faintly hears a’dewah whisper for ala mhigo before he turns to tail lyse and the others, the brilliant purple and gold gyr abanian flag fluttering in the high winds as thousands, maybe more, sing the anthem of a newly freed nation.

all in a day’s work, valdis thinks as she lugs her heavy robes through the shallow pond to sit upon one of the little planters and look at the setting sun. the breeze, the small blades of grass and leaves between her fingers, the petals fluttering into the skies and the fading aether of shinryu and zenos and everything that made her distorted and confused—

duscha leans next to her at some point, and neither of them say a word as lyse’s voice carries to the skies; merely listening as the cheers and cries of relief wash away the crackling thunder and roaring pain still echoing in their ears.

neither of them say for ala mhigo, for the steppe, for ishgard, for eorzea, either, and valdis quietly realizes that she perhaps isn’t alone in missing home, no matter how quiet she is about it.