#why would he leave me and our children (the salmon fillets)

[chimielie]

bf went home for the weekend should i waste away and die

[efrmellifer]

La Pelea

Wolmeric Week May 2021, Day Four: Fight/Battle

Aymeric and Etien both looked up and over when the steward came in, Etien’s teacup still tilted against her lips, Aymeric’s fork halfway lifted.

“Yes?”

“My lord, my lady, the cradles have arrived.”

Etien was the first to rise, pushing up and out of her chair as she placed down her napkin. “Excellent, that’s the afternoon planned, then.”

Now Aymeric stood. “You are not about to carry all those ponzes of wood. Finish your lunch, and then you can make sure everything is present and correct when it has all been brought in."

With a sigh, she sat down again, lifting another forkful of egg to her mouth. “Fine.”

He paused as he passed her, running a knuckle down her cheek. “I know, my dearest. I can only imagine how frustrating it is, to go from having to do everything to almost not being allowed to do anything. But as you have kept Eorzea safe, keep our children safe.”

She nodded. “You’re right. All right, I’ll head to the bedroom to tally everything when you’re done.”

He patted her shoulder, then walked out into the cool day to lead in the delivery of wood, already carved and prepared to be assembled into matching cradles.

So for the moment, Etien was left alone with the kicking of the kits and the clinking of her dishes as she finished eating.

At last, she hauled herself up from her chair again, shuffling down the hall. The bedroom was a veritable mess, full as it was with the decorated lumber. But Aymeric was nowhere to be found. She poked her head out the door, looking around.

“Aymeric, darling, are you around?”

Nothing. Hmm.

At what felt like a glacial pace to her, she came down the hall again, calling as she went.

Sighing, she went into the bedroom and started counting the parts. Eight legs… two headboards… four top and bottom parts and four sides… Seemed like everything they needed was there. Now she just had to wait for Aymeric to return? Appear? And they could get to work.

She half-sat on the bed, not able to sit on the floor like she might have otherwise, and not committing to sitting fully on the bed.

Her ears swiveled as she heard the door.

Coat hung up. Boots off, slippers on. And now, he was coming down the hall… he entered the room.

“Everything here?” he asked.

“Where were you?”

“I had to go buy glue and better nails. I—you had no idea, did you? I can only say I’m sorry.”

Etien shook her head. “We have all the parts. Let’s get to it.”

He offered a hand to help her to the floor, and waited for her to get comfortable before he brought her the tools she would need to start the assembly.

“Remind me again why the woodworkers didn’t just bring us fully-built cradles already?”

“I though this might be a good bonding experience. Much of our collaborative work has been taking to the battlefield side by side, or striving for Ishgard. It is an honor to do any work at your side, but I want to do the work of a household with you.”

“Aw. All right, bring me a headboard and the edges of the base, please.”

He handed over the pieces she’d requested, and then set to working on the other cradle, the both of them quiet in their focus, though Etien started humming softly, almost absently.

“All I’m saying,” she said after a while, driving a nail, “is we could have just painted these. Flowers, wildlife, a map of Ishgard.”

“I understand, Etien.” Aymeric fit the side slats into the base piece of the cradle he was working on, gluing them into place as he went.

“Aymeric?” When he looked up, she beckoned. “Can you come here? I need a third hand.”

He rose and came to her side. “Do you not think you should have the whole sides completed before fixing them parallel?” he asked her, gesturing to the way she was building the base first.

She looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. A long moment passed while she ran her tongue up her incisors, then sucked her lips into her mouth. “Well, since you know what you’re doing, I’ll leave this to you,” she said, taking great pains to get up on her own, silently refusing his hand to help her up.

She left the room then, and Aymeric wondered whether T’ahn Tia had felt as devastated watching her walk away angry as he did right now.

That devastation came with a hot wash of shame, too. He could chalk it up to her being hormonal on top of her usual degree of sensitivity, but he could also just be sorry that he had pushed her to the breaking point. It wasn’t that big a deal, after all, and he wasn’t even in opposition to her. So anything other than trying to meet her where she was and acknowledge that he had hurt her without meaning to would have just been… wrong.

He didn’t want a fight.

He had often thought, watching her stand against Vishap, and then against Nidhogg, or following behind him as he made his sword her shield, how lucky he was that circumstances had not led to them being on opposite sides of a battlefield.

He had seen her fight, and he was glad that he was fighting alongside her, not against her.

Though that turned his thoughts a bit darker. It was hard to forget what Etien had told him, about the trial Elidibus had subjected her to. That in a horrid watery hell, some creature had been made to don his skin and strike her.

The thought revolted him. He would have Naegling desynthesized before he would have the blade bite her flesh.

Etien’s vivid account of it, of being so broken by the image of him staging a relentless attack (she had let ‘him’ hit her twice before she started fighting back) and then Estinien raining dragon-fire upon her that she had hardly taken any present-minded notice of the fake Yugiri’s dagger slashes, it haunted him.

It kept him up some nights, wondering what he would have done if the roles were reversed.

Some creature transformed into Etien, with all her skill at the bow? He might just have lost that battle.

So he didn’t want to fight with her about something so silly as how she had been assembling a cradle. For their children. And with the way she was walking, they were due soon.

With a shake of his head, Aymeric went back to constructing the cradles. When Etien came back, he would apologize. For now, his actions would speak for him. She had left it to him; the least he could do was what she had asked him to.

He lost himself in the process of it, the alternation of glue of wood as he got the sides put together, the rhythm of driving nails and setting the legs into place to be held fast. He was so entrenched in his task that it was only when he noticed he was both done and in pain that his focus broke. He took a deep breath in, like he had just surfaced from underwater, and looked around.

It was darker now, likely mid-evening. His head hurt from focusing, and his back and knees hurt from the position he’d been in for several bells now.

But at least the cradles were done.

He sat on the floor for another moment, though, trying to settle himself back in his body, taking stock. It had been a long, odd afternoon.

While he was sitting there, though, Etien had come into the room. Now she draped her arms around his neck like the most exquisite scarf he’d ever own, and kissed the crown of his head.

“Come eat, darling. I made salmon.”

He started to stand, but not so quickly that he’d throw off her balance. As he rose, he started, “I’m sorry, Etien, for earlier.”

“Shhhh. It’s all right. I needed a moment to cool myself and clear my head, and then I didn’t want to disturb you. I’m sorry, too.”

Aymeric bent and kissed her. “All is forgiven, I think?”

She giggled. “Yes, it is.”

Hand in hand, they left the bedroom, heading for the dining room.

“Salmon…” he mused as they sat. “Lemon pepper, or birch-glazed?”

“Both. Oki gave me two fillets, so I did one each way.”

“Oki fishes?”

“He was going to teach me, too, but then I was confined to the city.” She shrugged. “So for now, Oki gets us our fish, until I can do it for us.”

“Well, regardless of who caught them, you always cook them beautifully.” Etien held out her fork to him, and he took the morsel of fish off it. “Exactly as I said: beautiful.”

“Well, you needed a reward for working so hard,” she cooed.

Aymeric gestured around them. “What better reward is there than this?”