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myreia · 13 days ago

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Exile from Delight

—chapter 2: the casual cruelty of causality

Rating: Mature Characters: Thancred, Hilda Pairings: Thancred x Hilda [background Thancred x Aureia (WoL) and background Aymeric x Aureia (WoL)] Chapter Words: 3,372 Summary: Hilda isn’t supposed to mean much to him. A good time, a fun time, a distraction from his sorry lot. But sometimes the best of distractions come hand-in-hand with a sharp tongue and a quick wit. Call it the gift of insight, if you would. Prompt: v. laughter | gift Chapters: one • two • three Read on AO3

Where are we going?

It’s a question he doesn’t bother asking as Hilda marches him through the streets. They wind their way through slush and snow, past the blocks of worn stone and creaking scaffolding that should have fallen down ten years ago, and join the crowd that flows from one end of the Brume to the other during the early afternoon lull. Despite the changes Aymeric de Borel’s reforms have brought, they have yet to become tangible for the folk down here. The Firmament may offer a glimmer of hope, of a community strengthened by a shared goal—but there will always be lowborn in the same ragged clothing, huddled by the same crumbling walls, warming their hands over makeshift firepits that have come and gone for gods know how long.

There will always be those left behind.

Movement catches his eye as they round a corner. The crowd is thicker and moving quicker than usual—steps swift, feet light, hoods pulled up to cover faces, as if no one wants to be caught in the street. A mark of the tension in the city, perhaps. Ishgard may have joined the Eorzean Alliance thanks to Aymeric’s efforts and Aureia as his linchpin, but in welcoming Eorzea, the city has welcomed its problems. With war brewing on the Gyr Abanian front and new primal threats on the rise, there must be a question at the forefront of her people’s minds, regardless of station: can Ishgard survive more war?

“Funny how everyone’s out for a walk today what with this weather and all,” Hilda says, huffing for breath. The Brume isn’t the place for a leisurely stroll, and what they are doing certainly isn’t leisurely—she has set a blood-pumping pace, her cheeks turning red and her eyes bright. She surveys the road ahead with the warmth of familiarity, and raises a hand to a passerby, a small smile on her lips. “Then again with all the ruckus the highborn are causin’, of course folk want to see what it’s all about—”

“Ruckus?”

“Didn’t you know? There’s some kind of goings on in the Firmament today.” She shrugs. “That young lord Francel is throwin’ one kind of a fête or another… Little early to be doing that if you ask me, but I won’t say no to seein’ lowborn in high spirits.”

He pauses, brows drawn together, and glances over his shoulder at the passing crowd. Was his read wrong?

No time to think. Hilda is off again, traipsing through the snow with fierce determination. She pauses at the lower entrance to the Forgotten Knight, slipping beneath the overhang to brush snow off her gloves and out of her hair. His chest tightens. For a moment he is certain she is going to lead him through the door, perhaps ply him with a drink or two, but she ducks back out into the snow and continues on.

He blows out a long breath and watches it rise. He has avoided the Forgotten Knight for weeks now, ever since the night he returned with an injured Alisaie. Aureia still calls the inn here home, though rumour says she has been spotted at the Borel Manor more often than not. She isn’t the type to take up permanent residence there, but knowing her she has likely strewn enough of her possessions about that she may as well be living there.

Twelve take him. His gut twists just thinking about it even though he knows she is gone, accompanying the twins to Limsa Lominsa. Even so, he’d rather not take the chance of running into her. As she has made it repeatedly clear, they have nothing to say to one another.

Up the slippery steps, past a group of children with their legs swinging over the edge, and they make it out into Foundation. The city bustles with activity—soldiers returning from across the Steps of Faith, merchants headed to the Jeweled Crozier, nobles and commoners meandering through the streets, Halonic priests pausing to talk to passersby, the aetheryte plaza lighting up as visitors and citizens teleport in from wherever their journey took them. The growing threat of a snow storm does little to hinder them.

This is just another day in Ishgard.

Hilda slows her pace as they pass beneath the Arc of the Humble and enter Saint Reinette’s Forum. She draws to a halt and folds her arms, surveying the square with a strange look in her eyes.

The snow is thicker here. Drifts form against the walls of buildings and beneath stone benches and forgotten carts and the various bits of debris that have washed up even this close to the Pillars. The head and shoulders of the great dragoon atop the running fountain in the centre is weighed down by a blanket of white. A group of children race around it, throwing snow and tripping over their feet. Their giggles fill the square with glee.

“You don’t see it, do you?” Hilda says quietly.

Thancred shrugs. “‘Tis likely I do, if you tell me what you’re looking for, which I suspect you won’t.”

“And that right there, that is the point.”

“You have lost me, I’m afraid. Look, are you going to tell me why you dragged me here? We’re not exactly the kind of couple to take a stroll around the city and see the sights.”

She rolls her eyes. “So we’re a couple now, are we? Thought I was a distraction.” A pause. She glances at him, hesitant to speak. Odd, for her. “Grief is a funny thing, ain’t it? The more you live, the more you lose and some days it don’t matter whether there’s a sun in the sky or a fire in your hearth, you might as well have neither. Everything’s tellin’ you there’s nothin’ good left here. You can be surrounded by folk—good folk, bad folk, and everythin’ in-between—and somehow you’ve never been more alone. I find sometimes it helps to be reminded you aren’t. Does that make a lick of sense?”

“Frankly, darling, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

A dark look crosses her face. “Then you’re as blind as you are in that eye,” she snaps.

Anger gnaws at him from the inside, scratching away at old hurts. “I am not.”

“What?”

“Blind. At least, not in the way you think.” Wind gusts about the forum, chafing his exposed face and chilling him to the bone. “‘Twas an accident some time ago. A consequence of my time lost in the Lifestream. I am not blind in the conventional sense but…”

He pauses, scratching at the stubble on his chin. It’s odd to be recounting this to Hilda. They’ve been all manner of intimate, but he has said scarce about himself. Close in one way, yet distant in the ways that matter. Another habit of his, this one going back further than his disastrous exit from Ul’dah. “My ability to manipulate aether is gone. Cut off as assuredly as a limb severed from a tree.”

Hilda whistles. “Well, now… that sure is somethin’. Here I thought you insistin’ on walkin’ everywhere was some strange Scion quirk. You’ve all got ‘em.”

He meets her eyes and her expression softens. Now is not the time for jokes.

“How did it happen?” she asks gently.

“The same as anything grievous does,” he replies with a shrug. Across the forum, the children’s chase comes to an abrupt stop as one of them tips over into a snow drift. The others laugh and follow suit, one at a time, toppling over like a series of Doman mahjong tiles. “Unintended consequences for unintended actions. Do you know the circumstances that preceded Aureia’s exile to Ishgard?”

She nods.

“Then I will not bore you by recounting it. What you must know is that we—the remaining Scions, that is, and our leader—found ourselves beneath Ul’dah that night. It was clear within minutes of setting foot within that watercourse that there was no way to hasten our escape without a diversion. Y’shtola and I provided that diversion with the acceptance that we would give our very lives. Anything to ensure that Aureia and Minfilia…” His leg twinges, a deep ache above the knee that seldom bothers him save in the cold. An old injury now, though he can still recall how it felt when the arrow plunged through it. He doesn’t remember when or how it healed; he must have the Lifestream to thank for that. “And we did. Or we should have. Just as her spell brought the tunnel down upon our enemies, it thrust her and I into the Lifestream. Body, soul, and mind. Perhaps to be lost forever in the maelstrom, ‘till circumstances found otherwise. It was by no mean feat that Aureia retrieved Y’shtola. As for me…”

“You found your own way out.”

“One could say that, yes. Was it chance or fate? Perhaps an expert in aetherology can decide.”

“An aetherologist? Bah.” She snorts with laughter. “Don’t need an aetherologist to guess it spat you out on account of your foul moods.”

“Hey, now—”

“You’re a sour man. Sometimes. Wouldn’t put it past you to give the Lifestream a bellyache and watch it spit you out, eh?”

He forces back a smile. Damn Hilda. For someone who is supposed to be a casual affair, she certainly figured out how to mock him and make him laugh in the same breath in record time. Moenbryda would tease him, were she here. Something about how he always thinks himself more complicated than he truly is.

But Moenbryda isn’t here. She died well over a year ago, a distant past after the tribulations the Scions of the Seventh Dawn have gone through. Gone and forgotten. The others do not speak of her, and Twelve know Urianger will clam up the moment she is mentioned by name. Minfilia is gone now, too. Not dead, but something more than that. Worse than that. Will her memory be victim to the same inevitability? Just as Louisoix more than half a decade ago?

His heart clenches, his breath growing shallow. The ache in his leg pulses, annoyingly persistent. It usually fades faster than that after it flares up.

“Did it work?” Hilda asks solemnly. “That diversion?”

“Aye, it did. Aureia is here, is she not? And Minfilia is not.”

“What happened?”

Thancred eyes her. “You’re full of questions,” he grumbles under his breath.

She shrugs. “So, shoot me.”

“Not everything can be resolved with your rifle, Hilda.”

“Ha! Try arguing’ that at the Machinist’s Guild.” Her smile fades, her expression growing grim. “No, but truly. What happened? You Scions are among the most resilient folk I have met. So, if your Minfilia isn’t here, then…”

“Gone. She’s with Hydaelyn now. Of her own volition, or so I understand.” He pauses, the full answer far too complicated and fantastical to describe. Though Krile has assured him that Minfilia has joined with the goddess, he still cannot make sense of what happened in the Antitower nor the implications of what came before in the Ul’dahn waterways. What possessed her to turn around that night? And why did Aureia not stop her? “She was a civilian, Hilda. I trusted Aureia to keep her safe. She promised me she would keep her safe. And that is all you need to know.”

She nods. “This Minfilia… she was important to you.”

“As close as a sister. Like family.”

“Can’t say I know what that’s like, losin’ family. On account of me presentin’ a big problem to their noble arses… well. There was my mum, I suppose. And I’ve got friends who are good as kin, and if one of them up and vanished into nothing, I’d be downright furious about it. But I suppose the question is, Thancred—” She turns sharply and meets his eye. “Who are you angry at? Y’shtola, for castin’ that spell? Minfilia, for makin’ whatever choice she made? Aureia, for lettin’ you down? Or yourself, for not bein’ there to stop it all from happenin’?”

“I…” Her words are sharp and they leave him raw and aching. But it’s a good hurt—as if she is resetting a bone. Strange how Hilda has loosened his tongue on this subject more than anyone. Not even Krile, who claims to be Minfilia’s dearest friend, did as much. “I don’t know.”

Wind howls through the square, gusting snow and tugging at their clothes. Hilda’s hair blows across her face, getting stuck in her mouth. She spits it out and looks away, shoving her hands into her armpits as she observes the children shrieking by the fountain. They are playing on the lip now, walking in a short line with their arms thrown out. There are as many Hyur as there are Elezen, just as there are as many highborn to low. Perhaps this next generation is already resisting the prejudices of their forefathers.

“Look,” Hilda says after a moment. “I’ve known anger before. All kinds. Righteous anger, bitter anger. There’s a lot to be angry for. I grew up hating’ the highborn arses, and my father before that, and the drunken lout my mum was seein’ before I was old enough to know who my father was. But nothin’—nothin’—compares to the anger I feel on days I hate myself. Days when I’m too slow, too stupid, too reckless. Days when I muck things up worse than a chocobo’s stable. I’ve been trusted with things before, and aye, I have failed. And any time I’ve had reason to be angered with someone, the real person I am angry with the most is myself.”

“What are you saying?”

“Do yourself a favour and find an answer to that question. Because I don’t think there’s a way out of this until you do—HEY!” She takes off at an abrupt pace, marching towards the fountain with her hands in the air. The children freeze, wide-eyed and still as statues. Two are standing in the water, their coats hiked up to their knees. “Get out of there, you idiots! Go! Scram!”

The children scamper off, darting out of the fountain and across the forum, leaving a trail of footprints behind.

Hilda sighs and stretches her arms above her head as she watches them go, a fond smile on her lips. “Little fools,” she says as he joins her. “Don’t know what they’re gettin’ into.”

“An overreaction for a fountain, no? I didn’t take you for one to impose such arbitrary rules. Does Saint Reinette have some greater meaning for you?”

She snorts. “It’s nothin’ like that. Shouldn’t play in that water—on account of the piss.”

“…I beg your pardon?”

“Didn’t you know? Lowborn’ve been pissing in that fountain for centuries whenever some highborn buffoon gets his head stuck too far up his arse. Time honoured tradition at this point. Still, don’t want the children playin’ in… well. You know.”

“Frankly, that’s less of a mystery than how that damn fountain remains running in the first place in these temperatures.”

She chortles. With a shake of her head, she scuffs her boots on the ground, scraping at the ice and snow, then heads leisurely across the square. Always on the move, this one. Their trysts have all ended in some variation of her pulling her clothes back on, giving him a wink and a smile, and hastily exiting the scene. At first he thought it was due to some embarrassment about being (or not being) with him. The most unpleasant of the Scions, eleven years her senior (fucking hells), and with an appearance on the same level as a dishevelled nutkin. If he were her, he wouldn’t be caught dead with him, either.

Now he knows she simply cannot stay in one place for long.

Their relationship to date has been succinct. Perfunctory. The sex is good; she’s creative and spirited and invigorating in ways that stretch even his imagination sometimes. They fulfill each other in that way (most days), but no more than that. He can’t even take a gander at who she is beyond Hilda the Mongrel. Sharp-tongued, foul-mouthed, quick-witted. Proud and determined, a voice for her people. A damn good shot. In another age, she would be a folk hero.

He knew as much the day he met her.

With that in mind, wandering the streets with her after one of their encounters, long after the point where she would have (as she puts it) fucked off, is… New. Odd.

Newly odd.

It occurs to him that this may be the most they have spoken one-on-one outside of sex. Just as it occurs to him that there must be a reason why.

“I have to hand it to you,” Thancred says as they climb the next set of steps, following the long, sweeping arc upwards to the Pillars. They’ll exit out into the Jeweled Crozier soon enough… is the ring still at the pawnbroker’s? Should he stop and make sure? “This was a convoluted way of asking about Aureia.”

Hilda stops short, one foot ramming into a step. “Bleedin’ hells, ouch—” She sucks in a breath and winces, shaking her boot back and forth in the air. “Aye. It is. ‘Cause it’s clear to me no one else wants to do the dirty business of bringin’ her up with you.”

“Right. Perhaps because no one else considered it their business.”

“Rotten luck. I’m too nosy for that.”

“It’s rude.”

“Tough. Don’t know what manners you Scion types were brought up on, and I ain’t gonna stick around long enough to find out.” Her ruby eyes narrow and she sets her foot back down on the step. “You’re hurt. She’s hurt. Someone has to do somethin’.”

“It doesn’t have to be you.”

“I may be nosy, but I’m not usually one to shove myself into a place I don’t belong. Trust me on that. But you two’ve caught me in an awkward position, y’know. I am her friend, aye. Just as I am yours. And as much as I dislike being stuck between the pair of you, I don’t know how many times I need to say sort your shit out.”

“I would love that, darling, but I doubt even the smartest, calmest mind in Eorzea would know where to begin.”

“You’re being unfair to her.”

“And you are not?” He steps into her, his gaze trained on hers. Their shadows flicker in the dark of the passageway, dancing away from the glow of distant lanterns. “You haven’t told her about our little sojourns, have you? For the truth of the matter, Hilda, is that you have been sleeping with me long past the point where you should have stopped. You’ve come to enjoy yourself, and a little part of you—that selfish, self-indulgent part that whispers in your ear at night, craving all the things you know you shouldn’t have—just can’t be silenced. Not yet. Not while you’re still having fun.”

She returns his gaze, a muscle twitching in her jaw. “You do realize she thought you were dead,” she says flatly.

His stomach drops, his heart hammering beneath his breast bone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She thought you were dead. When you were lost in the wilds. There’s a reason she never came to look for you, she was grieving your sorry arse. And when she finally discovers you alive and well, you’re holding the meanest, fattest grudge against her for something beyond her control because you’re too twisted up inside about the people you’ve lost. Did you ever stop to think she’s lost them, too?”

The passageway echoes with the sound of her voice, carrying it above and below—on and on and on, it might as well have been heard in the Brume.

“That…” He splutters. “That is not… That is…”

Hilda shrugs and spreads her hands. “That’s the truth of it, ain’t it?” she says pointedly.

For once, he has nothing to say.

Hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped, he follows her up the rest of the stairs and breaks through into the bright, cheerful pathways of the Jeweled Crozier.

next chapter ->

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