#this is. a very experimental introspection piece and i hope yall like it a little! :3

[fistsoflightning]

and then there was two.

there will always be someone who is completely, wholly unsaveable.

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

even before zaya met the newest reincarnation of minfilia, part of them knew it wouldn’t be who they were expecting.

minfilia—the first minfilia, the one who kept this world living for two centuries longer than it should, started a cycle of new minfilias that inevitably dashed their lives against the horde of sin eaters because her self-sacrificing, bleeding, golden heart would never be dimmed by something as simple as time and new life—had been dead for a very long time. even before those two centuries lost to halting the flood. she may have died in the sil’dih aqueducts to save what warriors of light she could, but to zaya she died the moment they drank firebrand poison and wine while toasting to a naive new ul’dah.

the memory of her haunts both of them in the worst ways, the two of them cursed to be in pain just by being touched by minfilia back before she was a leader and icon and a banner to rally under; hells, that selfsame memory nearly got both thancred and zaya killed, back when they were out for someone to blame for all the regrets wadded into the hole in their chests that losing her made standing by the cliffside outside of idyllshire.

but she will always, always be right over zaya’s shoulder no matter what, so they try their best to separate the minfilia living inside their head and the minfilia standing right in front of them; in this world, minfilia is more than a decade younger than her, more a daughter than a sibling and deserving of so much more than what zaya can give her. it’s going through the motions but with only half the heart behind them; half-moon smiles, quiet adventures in il mheg, laughs that are less than their usual thunderous quality. their heart has been bleeding for far too long to remember how they even managed to comfort lunya, sirius, and valdis in those humble beginnings in pearl lane, wound deepened by missing friends and another war.

zaya may have been one of many warriors of light, but minfilia was the leader of the scions, the one who remembered thancred and zaya from before the calamity split their memories into two, the one who persevered through countless duties and pains to make sure the world at large would be safer, if even by just a fraction. 

and even in death, she leaves both zaya and thancred on their knees when the child whose name is only minfilia because it fulfills the populace’s need for heroes and legends and lights at the ends of countless tunnels says:

“i wish they’d just say it—just say that they hate me! i can see it thancred’s eyes, in zaya’s smiles—that they wish i was dead so she could return…”

…

there will always be another version of them hiding behind the topmost layer, and zaya finds that the newest one is quieter. more akin to brooding than to escaping or confronting, more like the state they were in after fighting zenos back in ghimlyt dark. they thought they’d shaken this version of themselves off, stored it in the back of their mind.

and yet here it is, with all the dreadful penchant for reminiscence they could ever want.

someone in their motley crew of heroes suggests they take a night of rest before facing a trolley ride one might not return from—honestly, zaya wouldn’t be surprised if it were lunya or hanami who asked (more like demanded), hoping to get them (or thancred) to say something, anything—and by the dirty looks lunya gives both of them before retreating to her sleeping bag, thancred hasn’t done anything either.

“i can’t believe either of you right now. idiots, the both of you.” lunya hisses as she rolls out her bedroll next to hanami’s, and zaya silently agrees before slinking out of the small room all of them have been spared to sleep in for a few short bells.

even in spite of the light festering under their skin, eating away at the font of lightning at the center of their soul and sapping their energy. zaya is too tired to sleep. too awake, too aware to sort through everything, and too in pain from the swell of their heart beneath their skin to choke out the words i’m sorry in some worthless attempt to make up for faults that have been lying below the surface of their skin for years.

so instead of retreating to the shed thaffe and jeryk cleared for them to sleep in, away from the endless light, they climb up to the tallest cliff, sit at the edge, and stare blankly into the orange sands of amh araeng. waiting, observing, taking in the endless weight of a dying world and drowning in it to see if they can even possibly measure up to what little minfilia feels when the people of the crystarium call her oracle, a beacon, a living legend.

even if zaya was fourteen again and filled with the anger at their own family they’d dispensed a while back, they don’t think the sheer rage of being shunned would match up to the despair of not just feeling, but knowing two people who are supposed to be your guardians detest you. zaya couldn’t dare to pretend they knew the pain minfilia was going through. hells, they barely knew themselves; understanding others was beyond them.

so they don’t, and instead of dwelling on the things they cannot understand, they focus on meditating—familiar, comforting, simple. close your eyes, breathe in deep, count to ten, exhale, repeat until your thoughts are calm instead of thunderous. 

and, inevitably, in the quiet lull of the thunderstorms inside their head, their thoughts wander to the minfilia they knew—the one that yet lives inside their head.

she might be two summers their elder, but zaya can’t help but think of her as younger, even when they met in the goldsmith’s guild all those years ago—she a miner with a gift and an almost-brother and they a goldsmith with nothing left to lose. even now, with her eyes stolen away by the crystalline blue of hydaelyn, zaya can remember the warm grey from before she was a mouthpiece for this god all of them were bound to, and wonders why.

why take her? why someone so dedicated, so optimistic, so many things left to do and say? why make her a mouthpiece instead of giving the mercy of not seeing your friends and almost-family suffer at the sight of you? why can’t zaya save the first woman they thought of as my sister since leaving the steppe?

i promise i won’t hurt you, they said once upon a time to a girl afraid of them because of their legacy as the ‘bolt from the blue’, coliseum menace and one of few to face off against ‘raging bull’ raubahn aldynn and survive the encounter. i promise.

why were they calling themselves a hero—or worse, minfilia’s friend if they couldn’t extend, couldn’t keep that promise with a girl that carries minfilia’s legacy?

zaya opens their eyes to the expanse of orange sands once again, entirely drained and wanting to go back to a time before… everything. they can’t come up with an answer before sati comes out from the bushes and sits beside them, laying her hand over theirs in a solidarity zaya hasn’t seen from her in years—not since she was small enough to not see above their waist and living under both dorbei’s and their care.

“are you…” sati trails off, her voice murky, like zaya is underwater and hasn’t surfaced in a long, long time. “no. i’m… i’ll just sit here, ‘kay? not gonna leave you here.” her voice is the firmest it’s been in years, more confident in her decision than ever before, and zaya doesn’t fight it. they don’t fight reese or rjoli’s pitying stares, ihget’sae’s worried glance from the corner of the room, hanami’s angry tail whips, or lunya’s frustrated silence when they walk back into the shed, either. they don’t rest much either, instead pulling out their journal and flipping to the page where thancred had jokingly wrote some poetry over five years ago, before everything crumbled and their ul’dahn trio fell to two, fingertips running over the words—

but i have promises to keep, and miles to go before i sleep, and miles to go before i sleep.

…

zaya quietly walks over to minfilia as thancred and urianger do some final checks to their equipment and the talos, not really knowing where their fellow warriors are but knowing they don’t have long before they leave. their stomach churns, empty and hollow, but filled with imaginary butterflies instead; the kind that accompanies both their feelings for thancred and the dread of arguments.

“minfilia?” they say as clearly as possible, voice still cracking from the dryness of amh araeng and the struggle of learning to speak after decades of hardly opening their mouth. “c’n we talk?”

she sniffles, nodding her head, and zaya scoops up both of her hands into theirs, quietly turning her to face them and oh, her eyes are still red and teary, she’s still not handling this well. the urge to just pull her into a hug and never let go is overwhelming, but what she needs is not a pat to the head, not a simple hug, not just loving words and a sincere apology but all of the above.

if only thancred could pull his guts together to join them.

“heard you an’ urianger yesterday,” zaya says soothingly, tightening their grip over minfilia’s small hands only when fear seeps into her expression. “and ‘m so, so sorry i can’t love you the way you need me to.”

minfilia practically stumbles over her words, quietly tugging her hands further and further from zaya’s grasp and oh gods zaya really hopes they aren’t hurting her, quickly letting go when she tugs next. “i—no, it’s fine, i promise! yesterday was just—”

“no, y’u were…” it’d be too cruel to say that she was wrong; too cruel to say that both of them truly wanted the best for her, didn’t hate her in misguided parts when thancred said nothing at all and zaya couldn’t find the right things to tell her, but it was easier, if needed. then again, zaya had never been one for the path of least resistance. “you were right, but not about one thing; we… we both hate ourselves.”

she looks utterly shocked at the idea, but zaya pushes forward and tells the tale of how they and thancred almost didn’t live to see norvrandt; how they pushed each others’ buttons until he cracked first, how they both tortured themselves over the mess that was that age-old escape from ul’dah and how minfilia’s legacy has haunted them for longer before they knew her… with many, many changes. it isn’t a ballad, nor a fairytale, but it is the truth, and it is what she deserves to know about her guardian and her ally.

“you… you two…?” she mumbles, eyes wide and less teary than before. good. “but—you two are practically—when we were in dhon mheg, and the ravel, and the temple, you two were inseparable.”

zaya feels like that is a gross exaggeration—they can stand not knowing how thancred is doing for a few minutes—but continues anyways. “not always. we’re a lil’ stupi’ now, b’t we were worse ‘fore this.”

“i don’ wanna be forgiven,” they say, quietly; a secret that very few know and even fewer try to remember. “i don’ deserve to, an’ neither does thancred. but…” they pull her closer, wrapping their arms around her back and hugging her tight, as if she might suddenly disappear from zaya’s life like minfilia did all those years ago before they could tell her how incredibly glad they were to know her. “i wanna try again—do better, f’r you, if you let me.”

minfilia, for all her strength, doesn’t respond—not speechless, but occupied. her tears drip, drip, drip down zaya’s back, the blue overcoat they normally wear tied around their waist to reveal their (rather ragged) white tanktop. when she does catch her breath for long enough in gaps between her silent sorrow, she pulls her arms away from zaya’s chest to wrap around their neck instead, burying her face into their shoulders.

“i… i don’t know, yet,” she says truthfully, and zaya is glad thancred told her about the whole lying versus harsh truth thing they’ve always had a hard time explaining themselves. “can i tell you when we get back?”

when we get back, zaya thinks, sifting through the words in their head. she was always more earnest around them, or lunya, or any of their small crew that wasn’t thancred, really, but in her words she promises, not tries to promise. we.

“o’ course,” zaya promises back, because it’s the least they can do. they have a lot of promises to keep, they realize shortly after opening their mouth, but it feels… good. “always.”

...

the trolley crashes—because yet again, nothing is ever easy for the warriors of darkness, is it?—zaya’s horn is cracked from falling onto a very big rock, ran’jit is soaked in the memories of an old, different minfilia and then betrayed by the newest minfilia, and thancred stays behind. zaya prays it’s not because he fears what he might say to the old minfilia but because he’s had decades to learn that sometimes actions speak as loud as words do from learning zaya’s story until it was burned into his memory, fingers calloused and burnt from learning a storm made incarnate inside out, and he’s finally decided to use that knowledge instead of keeping it boxed in his chest. their head is utterly throbbing as they run ahead of lunya, lightning running through their blood faster than ever before because what if they lose not one but two on this journey, what if thancred has finally bit off more than he can chew, what if it’s like ul’dah all over again—

“zaya!” ihget’sae barks out in worry, even if his voice is more angry than it is soothing, and it hurts so much more than they thought it would to listen. “slow down!”

they stop, then, if only because the sickening feeling of bile rising up their throat from the pain is new, different, horrible. minfilia—who looks worriedly at them as she passes—keeps running ahead, and only when hanami and sati catch up to all of them does zaya start their desperate sprint again.

when the light-seared sky makes hanami’s aurum regis horn glint menacingly, zaya clutches at their own horn tighter. the crack feels bigger than it should, but it—their horn—doesn’t matter. if the price to pay for norvrandt’s salvation was their horn and the pain sure to follow, they’d pay it gladly. they’ve survived worse than a loss of balance; even if it did mess up their ability to fight with their fists, it would be a equal exchange for a world.

one life for one world, urianger’s voice rings from memory, except this time he had no say in the sacrifice. 

good, a more bitter part of them responds. the pure rancor from the voice inside their head sings of something abyssal, something they usually bury under lightning and fire and earth, but it sings truer than most of zaya’s scattered thoughts, as of late. as it should be.

zaya keeps running.

and when they finally make it to the fallen palace of nabaath areng and get dragged through a centuries-old memory of ardbert, minfilia, the warriors of darkness before them, and the flood, zaya is left on their knees by minfilia for the second and final time.

“ours is a meeting long overdue,” the word says to the oracle, not even waiting for the warriors surrounding little minfilia to regain their bearings. “full glad am i that we may finally speak.”

zaya remains sitting on the liquid crystal floor as lunya, hanami, sati—everyone but them gets up to look minfilia—the word of the mother minfilia—eye to eye, instead staring at the light bleeding and blurring her figure like some runny painting in a tarnished storybook left out in the rain. maybe it’s the tears stinging at the corners of zaya’s vision, but she looks… tired. tired of waiting, tired of watching, tired of perpetuating a cycle of pain and suffering that is going to end, one way or another, now.

and suddenly, they have one answer to thousands of whys. minfilia cannot be saved, they think, because she is like you. determined. blessed. chosen. (cursed.)

so when the word—minfilia looks to them longingly, zaya does not say how they wish she was still alive, how they wish they could show her what they can accomplish now. instead, zaya foolishly says, “t’hncred says ‘ello,” and keeps their mouth shut for the rest of the short visit to some realm where the gold of both minfilias’ hair bleeds into the light-soaked scenery, their saved tears quietly hidden behind untied hair and long bangs.

they think they might make it from this conversation relatively whole, watching quietly and contentedly as the two daughters of hydaelyn speak their minds with them as the witnesses. the almost do, and then minfilia whispers “i am truly sorry, friend. i love you.” and zaya’s heart is undone.

…

they don’t wake up with everyone else at the foot of nabaath areng, after minfilia disappears for good and after the waking memories of ardbert being refused his sacrifice.

instead, zaya wakes to their hair untied, thancred’s (torn, bloodied, stained) coat thrown over them, and a girl with grey eyes and terra-cotta hair looking surprised to see them awake. not a few seconds later does zaya sit up, head reeling as they look around to see the scions sitting just a little bit over three yalms away

“zaya,” she exhales tiredly. “you’re awake. lunya thought—” she points to their right horn, not daring to touch the ridges. “—the wound you were hiding here was more serious than just knocking you unconscious, seeing as it… well.”

they reach up to touch where the crack was, fingertips shaky and scratched up beyond all belief and find the smooth surface that only accompanied crystal, and from the slight thrum in their horn from the touch…

“thancred says it’s lightning crystal, or some gemstone attuned to your aether.” the girl carefully presses a mirror—dusty, old, slightly cracked—into their hands. “i, er. i don’t quite understand it all, but… when she—minfilia, that is—brought us back to nabaath areng, my appearance and your horn were already like this.”

zaya lifts the mirror to their face, and oh—the crack on their horn is filled with small slivers of gleaming gemstone; blue topaz, which explains the weird, sharp, clear and crisp tones to all of the sounds zaya’s can hear. it’s almost too similar to the exarch’s situation, what with the crystal marking his face and arm, but hells, they’re surprised they can hear at all with the gemstone filling the gaps between rough bone. gemstones aren’t crystal, after all.

but zaya has more pressing matters to attend to than figuring out the logistics of filling in a fracture with a non-organic material; besides, it’s not like their horn will be going anywhere.

“who are you?” zaya asks as the chatter from the scions and warriors die down.

“i—” the small girl with the weight of a two century long legacy in her hands and every last one of them standing by her side pauses, a small glimmer of hope crossing her eyes like a thunderbolt as she looks at them carefully. they both know what zaya asked wasn’t from amnesia, but of something else. “my name… is ryne.”

firefly, zaya quickly signs, and thancred inhales sharply from three yalms away even as ryne tilts her head in confusion. he knew nearly every sign in the book; it wasn’t surprising he’d catch them giving ryne a gift of their own. it’s the closest to saying i love you so, so much without saying it at all, because words wouldn’t possibly fit i’m sorry, are you alright, and can i try again all in six words.

“means firefly,” they clarify for ryne when she looks back at thancred, confusion turning into worry. “your new namesign, if you want? can’t keep callin’ y’u minfilia.”

“...i would like that very much,” ryne says, smiling and trying to keep a few tears from building at the corners of her eyes, and in that very moment—then there were two of an old friendship left behind, the shadow of minfilia finally lifting from zaya’s shoulder as ryne’s smile brought zaya’s heart back; salvation.