#sarani saves the day once again

[nowandthane]

I have no words tbh I’m still freaking out about this 😭

commissioned the incredible @jazzajazzjazz ❤️

[dawnslight-aegis]

19. taken

(follows prompt 14 - telling)

Two days after Daava had collapsed on the streets of Terncliff, he was awake and reasonably energetic, though Marz had, for the time being, confined him to a bed – a proper one, in an infirmary, as much as she hated being inside a place that still felt Garlean down to the rivets in the cold metal walls.

Two days, and he was already making a nuisance of himself.

“So. Linnaea. Your viera… friend? What’s her deal?”

Marz looked up from the salve she was mixing and leveled a suspicious look at her older brother. She knew that expression. Innocent, as if he had no motive beyond curiosity, but in reality… “Why do you want to know?”

Eyes going wide in mock offense, Daava recoiled slightly. “She saved my life, why wouldn’t I want to know?”

“Uh-huh. And this has nothing to do with the fact that you apparently already asked her out on a date. Which, I have to say, is the single stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, because we’re in the middle of very recently enemy-controlled territory, and where in the hells would you take her anyway?” Marz groused at him, irritated for reasons she couldn’t quite pin down.

“Oh, c’mon, Saree, you know better than to think that was serious.”

“Marz. And really. You’re not going to ask me if she’s single or taken.”

Bright blue eyes looked around the infirmary guiltily, and then settled on her again. “…No?”

Rolling her eyes at him, Marz set her mortar and pestle aside and leveled a look directly at him. “I think she likes women, actually.”

She let the dismay settle on his face for a long moment before bursting into laughter.

“Haha, very funny, Marzanna.”

“It was, actually. But to be honest, I don’t know her all that well – we’re acquaintances and comrades, more than anything, though I do like her. She’s never mentioned anything about her romantic life at all. She could be married, for all I know.”

“But she could also not be,” Daava responded with a grin, and Marz sighed as she got up to put away some leftover ground herbs.

“Yes, that is also an option.”

Seemingly satisfied, Daava settled back against the bed, and it was blessedly quiet for a long moment before he spoke again. “And what about you, little sister?”

Marz’s hands froze at the careful neutrality of his tone, swallowing hard at the memories that rose, unbidden. The ghosts of all they had lost lingered always in the room, but now it felt like they crowded in close, suffocating her – Veha’s most of all.

The man she’d promised to love for all her days, who had been her brother’s closest friend before that, was gone, had been for years now. It was a wound she thought had scabbed over, at least, but even the most oblique mention from her brother ripped it wide open once more, too deep and too painful to be mended by methods medicinal or magical. The notion that she’d moved on was insulting to his memory, and it immediately soured her mood.

Perhaps that was why she’d been so annoyed by his question about Linnaea. Love had always come so easily to Daava, both from others and for them. He’d never had to fear that he was too awkward and too strange for anyone to look at him like that – or now, too angry and too broken. No, he was the same as he always was, flirting with girls without a care in the world.

She knew as she thought it that it was unfair, so she caught the words behind her teeth as they threatened to spew out, and instead muttered “None of your business,” under her breath, all while patently refusing to think of the handful of people she had shared her bed with in the years since coming to Eorzea.

“Sarani, you know he wouldn’t have wanted –”

Marz flinched at the words and she shoved her supplies back into her bag with more force than she would normally use. “When, exactly, has what anyone wanted made a damn bit of difference on how things are?” Marz shot back as she spun around to face him, arms crossed tightly over her chest and unable to keep the vitriol from dripping from her tone. “And stop calling me that. I’m not a child.”

Daava sighed, and for a moment his expression looked so much like their father’s that Marz couldn’t look him in the eye. “I’m sorry. You’re not. I shouldn’t have pried.”

There was an awkward silence as the door slid open, and a tall, willowy figure stepped through, fresh bandages in one hand and a tray of steaming hot tea balanced on the other. Linnaea looked back and forth between the siblings before raising her eyebrows in understanding.

“I brought – ah. I’m interrupting, aren’t I? I’ll come back.”

“No, it’s fine,” Marz mumbled under her breath. “I was on my way out anyway.” She grabbed her pack and slung it over one shoulder, slipping between the viera and the door frame in a way she really hoped didn’t look as much like running away as it felt like.