#surprise surprise lucas is another of my very tired chars who needs a hug badly

[blackjackkent]

Vague fic ideas rattling around bc SotO release has kicked me right in the feels...hopefully will get to writing something more full soon but for now, random little word-vomit drabble...

Set probably a day or so after the end of the SotO story missions. (Spoilers obviously.)

It should have felt cold, sitting up there at the top of the world. There should have been biting wind, the sort of ice-cold air that blew directly through one's armor and froze at the heart. Lucas had stood atop the highest mountains of the Shiverpeaks and had felt that cold before, and even the tallest among them must be miles below where the Wizard's Tower now hung above the clouds.

And yet it was not cold. There was no wind. The sky was a brilliant blue mottled with clouds and sunlight, and the air was still, calmed and warmed by the overwhelming magic of those who lived there.

He sat cross-legged on a balcony at the top of one of the spires, his elbows resting on his knees, staring out into the endless expanse. Princess, curled up next to him, nudged her head gently under his arm and puffed out a small burst of smoke through her nose with a soft whicker. Absently he rubbed his fingertips along the scales between her eyes, and smiled to himself when this elicited the strange trilling purr that the skyscale produced when she was contented.

"You often seek to be alone, I notice, Wayfinder..." The voice whispered in his ear, silky-smooth, breaking the silence on the balcony, interrupting the slow circular train of his thoughts.

He hissed out a slow breath, closed his eyes. "And you, I see, don't respect that, Peitha," he said evenly. He didn't bother turning to see if the demon was speaking in his head or had actually chosen to manifest herself on the balcony with him. What did it matter, really?

He heard her chuckle softly. "What are you hiding from?" 

Oddly enough, the question didn't even seem to be malicious in nature. She was truly curious - or bored enough to act as if she was. He hadn't quite figured her out yet. Uncomfortable allies they might be...but neither of them had put their cards fully on the table yet.

"I'm not hiding," he said. "Just thinking."

"One can think anywhere in this place. It was made for thinking."

"Sometimes it's easier to think alone." He leaned on the word just slightly. She, unsurprisingly, did not take the hint.

"I think you are afraid," she said matter-of-factly. There was a taunting note to the words, but it was hard to tell if it was there by intention or by nature. Torment and cruelty were in her very being, after all. "You have told Isgarren to trust me. You have paved the path forward and now you must walk on it. And I think you are afraid to take the first step."

Lucas raised one shoulder and lowered it again. "You and your kind aren't as special as you think," he said coolly. "I've stepped onto many roads with death at the end of them. And I haven't flinched. If you're worried that I'll turn my back on you...don't be. When I give my word, I keep it. When the fight for your people comes, I'll be there."

There was a short silence. He was almost certain she was there with him in person, now; he could feel those glowing eyes burning into the back of his head. "What, then?" she finally asked, and he was surprised to realize that even the taunting tone was gone now. It was an honest question looking for an honest answer.

Were it anyone else, he might have even thought she was worried about him.

He shook his head slightly, hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, watching the lazy path of a bird circling among the stone arches below. He didn't mean to answer, so he was rather surprised to hear his own voice emerging anyway, distracted and distant.

"I had-- have-- many friends, back in Tyria. A team. Good people. They don't know about any of this. I've been gone for weeks now. They think I've just...vanished."

All the people he cared about, gone in an instant when he fell into that first rift in Gendarran Fields. Did Braham think, after all their strife, that he had simply disappeared? Did Taimi think he had abandoned her as her disease reached its ending stages? Did Rama and Gorrik and the others in Cantha think he cared nothing for their rebuilding?

And Canach...

His throat convulsed as he swallowed, and he squeezed his eyes shut again, grinding one fist into the opposite palm. He had been ready, only a few days before everything changed, to find an airship back to Cantha, to find Canach and put it all before him, to lay out everything he had realized in those chaotic dark hours in the Delves when everything had felt at its lowest. To say, I see now...I see that it's been you all along. I have been so lonely in the crash from one crisis to the next, but it has been you, the whole time, and I was too blind to see it. And if you'll have me now, I'm yours...

And then the rift appeared and the wizards caught him up in their war. And now he was a world away in that strange windless sky, with death and terror ahead of him, and despite the new comrades in arms that he had found, the sense of solitude, of desolation, was absolute.

"They think I disappeared. Left my duties and my loyalties and just…fled. Because of you and your kind, and the destruction you threatened.” A hint of accusation, of resentment, quickly controlled and bottled away. “Because another fight needed winning.”

The demon made a soft, thoughtful sound low in her throat. "You are not a prisoner here, Wayfinder. I do not think they would stop you, if you decided to go." 

“You would,” he said.

She laughed harshly, a strange shuddering sound inlaid on itself until it rang in his head. “I would try. You are my only hope. But even I do not know if I could stop you. I have put my trust in this fragile thing, this peace, just as you have.”

Silence. He swallowed, leaned forward to rest the heels of his palms against his temples.

She continued, almost gentle, but as implacable as steel. “So why do you stay?” The whisper slid through him like the blade of a knife.

He shuddered, drew in a hoarse breath that was almost a sob. “Because I can’t turn away. I can’t… for so long now, it’s been all there is to me. Another fight to win, another war to shoulder. It’s who I am… ” A terrifying void stretched in place of his purpose and identity if he left before this was finished. He could picture it, and it frightened him beyond measure. “They’re good people, here. They need my help. I can’t abandon them too.”

Perhaps if it were just him, he would have reached out, found a way to send a message, to tell the others where he’d gone. But it was not his secret to tell, and he did not know enough to be able to predict the consequences of more people, even those he most trusted, knowing about the Kryptis and the threat they posed. “So I’m here. Until it’s over, or I’m dead,” he finished flatly.

She said nothing for a little while, and he finally turned his head enough to see her out of the corner of his eye. She was standing leaned against the sloping wall that led to the spire’s peak, and there was something…appraising in that cold gaze as she watched him.

“What we fight against - the dissolution of my people - is of the greatest importance,” she finally said, and even though he could see her lips move, the words still echoed in his mind. “But if it is within my power, you will not die. And those you have left will see you again.”

He smiled faintly, without humor. “I don’t flatter myself that my life is more valuable than your success,” he said. “Or that your compassion isn’t calculated. But if I die and Tyria lives, then the price is fair.”

Please… he wanted to say. Please do not tell me that. Do not let me hope for things that may never come back to me. If I look away from the path long enough to stumble…

She tilted her head, and he wondered if she still saw enough into his mind to read it all. Some strange emotion lurked under the pale glow of her eyes, something almost like sadness. “Even a creature from the depths of Nayos knows when it owes a debt, Wayfinder,” she said. Then the moment of sincerity passed, and her lips curled in a smirk. “Besides - you are no use to me lost in despair.”

He scowled and turned away. “I will be there when the battle begins. Have no fear,” he said bitterly. “For now…just leave me alone.” Silence. He didn’t turn to look; he knew she had gone as he asked. But her voice still lingered in his mind with a parting shot. “Alone you shall be, then. It will not bring them back to you.”