Chapter Text
It was a grand old conference, Aymeric acknowledged, but that didn't mean he was going to spend a minute more than absolutely necessary trapped inside with the rest of the delegates. Not when there was a port brimming with exotic smells and colours and he couldn't remember the last time he'd left Ishgard.
The city of Tuliyollal engulfed him the moment he escaped the palace, and what small amount of concern he had for standing out vanished as he watched brightly dressed Pelupelu and rainbow hued Hanuhanu, so similar yet so different from the Vanuvanu of his homeland, hawking their wares to Hhetsarran and Shetonan visitors from Shaaloani amidst a swirl of Eorzean foreigners. He couldn't help swivelling his head every time he spotted a new pair of leporine ears over the crowd, and had to chide himself as he made his way down towards the markets.
Just because she was somewhere on this continent didn't mean he was going to spot her, but he still found himself hoping, even if it felt like picking at an old wound.
He was contemplating a display of delicious smelling skewers when the gods decided that actually, maybe now was a good time to stir up some trouble, just for the lord speaker.
She stormed past the other side of the stall, and he did a double take. Unmistakeable: the ears, the height, the swift economy of movement that had her parting the crowd and making rapid progress away from him-
His legs were moving before he had a chance to process what he would do if he caught her.
Azurae, warrior of light, bringer of shadow and newly anointed light-heavyweight champion of the Arcadion was moving as if she knew that if she stopped, she’d never start again.
Exhaustion fogged her ears and narrowed her vision, but she kept putting one foot in front of the other; she just had to get out of the city and do whatever she was supposed to be doing. Something about a shipment. Maybe. She'd figure it out when she got there. As soon as she got out of this crowd. This city. The people were pushing in on her, the yells starting to sound more and more like screaming, someone screaming for help, someone screaming her name-
"Azurae!"
She pulled up abruptly, popping out of the worst of the market crowd, and turned around.
What little breath she had left from practically sprinting through the throngs in the crowded lanes immediately woofed out of her. Aymeric –what the FUCK was he doing here– stood on the edge of the crowd looking at her like- his diplomat mask snapped into place, but not fast enough for her to miss the concerned tilt to his eyebrows.
Oh fuck.
"Aym- Lord speaker. What are you doing here?"
She wished she could claw the words back immediately. She was too tired for this. Too blunt. Guilt bubbled up her throat, raw and acidic, threatening her tenuous grasp on her own polite, busy hero mask. She wished...well, too late. Three years too late. She was the one who'd run, the one who hadn’t been able to find the courage to break things off cleanly, to deny him the dignity of even a goodbye, he deserved better than her, always had, and gods she was selfish and-
She dug her nails into her palms, hard, pulling her attention back in time to see how he winced at her words and her heart sank.
Great.
Perfect.
Her use of his title was as good as a slap in the face. If anything, it was a welcome moment of clarity, a confirmation of his fear for the reason behind her absence the last three years. Very well. If she would draw boundaries, he would respect them.
But gods protect she looked awful. Between the deep bags under her eyes and the twitchy way she was picking at her hands, he suspected she hadn’t slept soundly in a while.
And she could barely look him in the face. The warrior of twelves damned light, and she looked like a recruit straight off a six month tour of duty in the Western Highlands: exhausted, on the brink and in desperate need of somewhere quiet.
"Ah, forgive me...my friend.” The words tried to stick in his throat, but he managed to wrangle a polite smile onto his face. “I didn't mean to startle you. I was out admiring the city during a lull in the agreement talks and happened to spot you. It's been some time."
"Oh. Right. The talks."
There was an awkward pause as she continued to look anywhere but him, while he struggled mightily with himself: all he wanted was closure, for her to tell him for once and all why she’d excised him from her life, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her, not when she looked like she was moments away from sprinting for the nearest cover.
Gods damn it she couldn't do this right now. She had things to do. Someone was waiting for her, somewhere. Probably? And she did not have the time or the ability to have a grown up conversation to work through all the ways she'd fucked up with him.
"I have to go. Good luck with...the talks." She turned abruptly and left.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to sleep. She couldn't do either.
Aymeric watched her swiftly departing back and tried not to boggle.
Had she just run away from him?
He spent the rest of his meetings that afternoon turning over the encounter in his mind, probing at it like a sore tooth. The last time he'd seen her, up close anyways, was while they'd been hunting the blasphemy that had plagued Ishgard during the Final Days. He'd been consumed with worry for his people and had thought her distance and single minded focus was due to the enormous breadth of the peril facing the star, and he’d been loath to pull any attention away from that concern.
He remembered feeling oddly grateful that the world was ending, which he’d kept to himself for fear the guilt would destroy him, because it hadn't seemed the right time to ask her why she'd never come back to Ishgard after her adventure to the First. He’d been struggling with that hurt for years, and while he knew she’d been busy, the damn reports from the Eorzean alliance on her activities kept her ever present in his mind, he hadn’t been able to keep himself from feeling some anger at her. A quick linkpearl message, a letter, hells, even a memo from Tataru or Estinien on her behalf letting him know she was alive. He'd known their arrangement was never going to be permanent, but he'd thought...well, he'd hoped that he'd have warranted at least something resembling a farewell.
But had there been something else? He felt like he was going mad, replaying every interaction they'd had, trying to analyze the fuzzy memory of what her face had been doing while he'd been grappling with how to handle his homeland's divisive past. He grimaced at how single minded he had also been, drawing a confused look from the Head of Reason, who was deep in a technical rant about the difficulties they’d faced getting their aetheryte network online, and with a concerted effort he pulled his attention back to the present.
He wished she hadn't walked away.
At the close of the afternoon, the diplomats gathered for drinks and morsels of Turali delicacies served off enormous leaf covered banquet tables and Aymeric was presented with a dilemma. Many of the former Scions were in attendance, drawn like moths to the flame as they always were for world changing events, and if anyone would know what was going on with the warrior of light, it would be them. He hesitated for a moment at the entrance to the palace: he was supposed to be using this time to negotiate trade deals for Ishgard, it was why the house of lords had sent him all the way to Tural in the first place. But…something was off with Azurae. Wouldn’t it be in the interest of everyone involved to find out what? He tried to quell the question, but a small, traitorous part of his soul refused to let it be. He continued to waffle…until he remembered the haunted look in her eyes, and his heart took the reins.
"Azurae?" Alisaie considered, watching in amusement as her brother did his best to convince a dubious Shetona of the value in building train stations underground, like Garlemald. "Oh busy as ever, you know her!"
"Our hero." Hummed Y'shtola, ensconced in a circle of scholars debating the merits of studying electrope telescopes to pry into the aetherial sea. "She's been working through some injuries sustained at the Arcadion that concern me, but she's handling things as well as ever."
"Oh you know her! Always moving, tends to vanish off to who knows where when she's not saving the world!" Krile giggled from amongst a cloud of tiny pictomancy butterflies that she was using to astonish a crowd of spectators.
"She's killing herself."
Aymeric froze at the anger in Estinien's voice, though the intensity of the dragoon's voice was somewhat undermined by the casual way he was leaning against the wall, a tiny canapé perched in his enormous gauntleted hand.
"What?"
"Haven't seen her take a break in years. She takes on more and more and asks us for help less and less. Something's changed in her, and it's driving her hard."
"Why haven't you-"
"Do you really think I haven't tried? If she doesn't want the help, there's not a power on the star that could stop her. Haven’t heard anything about you reaching out either."
Aymeric ran his hand through his hair, flinching at the accusation.
"I- forgive me. That was unfair."
Estinien nodded, then turned abruptly to the window behind them, abandoning the jellied herring on the sill.
"Something happened. At the end of the universe. She won’t talk to any of us about it." He said over his shoulder.
"And you think I stand a better chance?" Aymeric asked, the disbelief in his voice clear as the stars over the palace.
"Maybe." Then the dragoon backflipped out the window and Aymeric rolled his eyes at the empty space.
"They have stairs, you dramatic ass." he muttered.
As he continued to circulate, making the right noises and smiling at the right people, Aymeric tried to put the pieces together. She was masking her exhaustion with her friends, but working harder than she should be and not taking breaks. Why wasn't she taking breaks? He recalled her gaunt, empty face and Estinien's pronouncement filled him with dread.
He wasn’t sure what to do with any of the information either. She’d made it pretty clear she didn’t want to talk to him but if she was pulling back from the Scions as well…did she have anyone to talk to anymore? His own aching loneliness flared at the thought that the woman responsible for the ongoing existence of every person on the star was cutting herself off. He’d seen this kind of behaviour before, in soldiers who’d pushed too hard and too far during the Dragonsong War, and he knew how dangerous it could be.
Unable to come to a decision, he started to make his way back to his quarters in the guest wing when he overheard a conversation between a Hanuhanu burdened with an enormous tray of freshly steamed reed dumplings and a concerned looking Mamool Ja.
“-big help as always, Azurae got us here safe and sound in record time.”
“Didn’t the vow of resolve ask that she be sent an invitation to the talks?”
“She said something about needing to get back to the For’ard cabins, I didn’t ask. She seemed very busy.”
The For’ard cabins…he’d seen the inn during a tour of the city earlier in the day, he was confident he could get there and back before anyone missed him. He’d just check and make sure she was alright. He discretely made his way to the front entrance and slipped back out into the city.
It was just starting to get dark when Azurae rolled back into town with the caravan from Ok'hanu with wagons full of…fireworks? Or food, something for the alliance talks. It had been a quiet trip, thank the star, only a few monsters had appeared to waylay them, and she headed straight for the For'ard cabins as soon as she was sure the Hanuhanu were alright to make the climb to the palace without her. A few people called out in friendly greeting, and she did her best to plaster a smile on her face for them, but it was harder and harder with each step to do anything but stare down at where her feet needed to go.
Then the door to her room was in front of her and she slid gratefully inside. She took a deep breath and tried to roll her shoulders out. They stayed painfully tense. She moved to the bed, and sat but couldn't stop her leg from bouncing, couldn't stop her mind from chasing through the threads of the day
The merchants hadn’t needed her help unloading, had they? She couldn’t remember offering. She still needed to stop by the port tomorrow to give a report on Ketenramm’s expedition, she would check on her way to make sure they didn’t need an escort back to Ok’Hanu. But she also needed to find more of these godsdamn demiatma for Gerolt, and there was a rumour going around that someone had found a way into the Forked Tower but first she’d need to find some more tomestones to trade for some better armour in Solution Nine to take a look but she also had to finish things with the Loporitts for the next stage in Sinus Ardorum and– she dragged herself back up to the table, where the concierge had left her a beautiful arrangement of fresh fruits. She picked up a perfect Ja Tiika banana, but couldn't bring herself to peel it. Her stomach heaved at the idea of food, and she quickly set it down. Maybe later.
Finally she grabbed the book Krile had sent her with her preliminary findings on pictomancy and collapsed onto the couch. She flipped to the first page.
‘In this discussion we shall examine the merits and flaws of new applications of pictorial magic-’
Had she said she was going to take a look at the new paper presses for Pameka? She couldn't remember.
‘And thus can conclude that pictomancy is, in fact, a discipline in which-’
She rubbed her eyes and went back to the beginning of the page. She'd parsed the words but absorbed nothing. Krile needed her thoughts, she wanted to present this dissertation to the council in Sharlayan as soon as possible, and Azurae had promised she’d help her with the discussion on some of the practical aspects of this colourful new magic.
‘In this discussion we shall examine-’
Had Shale found any new information yet on Calyx's likely whereabouts? It had been almost two weeks since their showdown with Zelenia, maybe she should-
"Fuck." She exhaled hard through her nose and tried to force her eyes, and her mind, to focus on the page before her.
‘In this discussion-’
"FUCK." She slammed the book shut and cradled her head in her hands for a moment. She had to focus. Krile needed this. She couldn't-
Abruptly she stood, forcing back a groan and ignoring the ache in her knees. She just needed some night air to clear her head and the folks over at the new train station could always use a hand. Nodding, she yanked the door open and marched north towards the bridge.
She just needed to walk for a bit.
Aymeric was just making his way past the avenue of statues commemorating the deeds of the previous Dawnservant when he heard a door clack shut in the quiet Turali dusk. He was surprised to see Azurae stomping her way out of the cabins. He nearly called out to her, but stopped when he considered what might have roused her from her bed this late in the evening. Concern welled up in him at the way she was moving. Her motions were abrupt, blunt. Nothing like the dangerous fluidity with which she usually moved. Could there be an emergency? Estinien's words floated back to him: she had stopped reaching out to the Scions for help. He sped up his steps. She may not be interested in seeing him, but he'd be damned if he let something happen to her because they were BOTH stubborn fools.
He followed her all the way to the bridge, and caught a seat on a small tour wagon that was returning to Xak Tural for the night. He was relieved to see she had opted to walk the bridge instead of teleporting to an aetheryte. Probably not an emergency then.
On the other side of the bridge he nearly lost sight of her as he exchanged some coins for a rroneek mount, and in his haste nearly revealed himself. Or so he thought. He was concerned she hadn't noticed him yet: he wasn't being particularly subtle as he tailed her from the city near the bridge head on a beast the size of a small cottage. He debated breaking his poor attempts at stealth as they arrived at the next town where he saw her speaking to a tall Hrothgar woman in front of a large building overlooking a number of train tracks. There had been some discussion of this initiative during the conference, an attempt to bring the large cargo capacity of the trains in Shaaloani to the wider continent of Tural. They'd been facing some challenges, but now he understood the emphasis that the train company representative had placed on "reliable outside help" cleaning things up for them.
Before he could decide if revealing himself would be for the best, she finished her conversation and spun on her heel, heading west into the badlands.
She couldn't stop moving. She was so tired but she couldn't sleep. The roiling anxiety in her gut wouldn't let her. What if- what if what if what if spun through her head as she tracked west, looking for...she didn't even know, but she shifted with a snap to her dancer soul crystal, to move more quickly. Pigments. That's what she was looking for.
She spotted a likely looking rock a few hundred yalms out of town. Another quick soul crystal switch to pull out her mining pick. She blinked blearily at the deposit, then started swinging. A moment later she was glaring at the handful of sub par material in her hands. She was so tired...she didn't want to try again. Then a thought intruded as she went to put her pick away: what if one of the railroad employees tried to get this themselves after her offering was found to be wanting. What if they got hurt. Her gut clenched. She picked up the mining pick and swung some more.
Her shoulders and back were burning by the time she'd gathered enough high quality pigment to satisfy Nitowikwe. The sun was gone and the chill of the Xak Tural evening started invading her bones. She shivered and switched, hopefully for the last time, back to dancer and started making tracks back towards the railroad. Her eyes were so blurry she could barely get her feet around the rocks without stumbling. Just this one thing and she could take a nap. Maybe. Just for a little.
She didn't see the cerule analas until she'd basically stumbled into the middle of a pack. She bit back a curse as blue fire exploded around her and she flipped her chakrams out, refusing to back down and feeling like an utter fool for not noticing the enormous, flaming serpent creatures. Another explosion slammed into her back and she stumbled to one knee. Fuck, how were there this many? She whirled, sending her aether spinning out alongside her rainbow-feathered discs, and a cerule fell. Too bad there were another six waiting for her, and several more hits rocked her as she tried to reposition and also keep the monsters at bay.
She hissed in pain and wished she'd chosen a more armoured soul crystal. The creatures started closing in as she struggled upright, gods damn it she was NOT going to go down like a dumbass in the desert to a bunch of overgrown snakes-
And then they caught sight of something behind her and started lobbing explosions over her head.
"Wha-"
Aymeric arrived greatsword first, Naegling taking an anala apart at the midsection. It collapsed in a flaming heap, causing the rest to hiss furiously at the newly arrived combatant.
"How in the hells-"
"Find safety my friend, I can handle these."
"Absolutely not, you get out of here, I have this." she snarled, but her knees wobbled a bit. She had this.
He ignored her completely and stepped into the circle of flaming monsters, paying her only enough mind to keep himself between her and her assailants. She gritted her teeth and forced herself upright. Fine.
With Aymeric pulling their focus, she was able to concentrate on taking them down instead of dodging around without getting any attacks off. She flinched hard when he took a big hit from the side and cursed herself for letting him stay, stubbornly ignoring the fact that there was very little she could have done to stop him.
Moments later, the analas lay dead around them, and they stood for a moment breathing hard. Then Aymeric winced and she snapped to her scholar crystal with a small grunt of effort. Gods she was tired.
"Hold still." she said, trying not to grit her teeth as she dredged up enough aether to summon the fairy Selene, who immediately set about bathing them in gentle healing magicks.
Aymeric nodded in thanks, carefully moving his hand away from the hole the explosion had torn in his overcoat. She averted her eyes. Her fault.
"What in the hells are you doing out here? Did you follow me?"
"And if I did? What are you doing out here? My friend, you are not well."
She flinched back, shocked by the anger in his tone and the glare he leveled at her.
"I'm fine-"
"You are not. When was the last time you slept?"
She glared back at him. How dare he. She sailed past his very valid question and snapped back, her ears rigid in fury.
"The engineers needed my help. It’s my responsibility-"
"You came here to look for something to do. Do not do me the disservice of lying to me, I saw you leave your cabin to seek out whatever was so important that you couldn't sleep until it was completed."
Her ears flicked in annoyance, but she was suddenly acutely aware of the weight of the pigments in her pouch.
"I'm...fine. It's fine. This is- whatever. I need to get these back to-" her mind stuttered as she lost track of who had even asked for the damn pigments. “...Nitowikwe.” She managed to finish after an embarrassing pause, and tried to brush past him, hoping he'd take the hint and leave.
He did not.
"Then I shall accompany you." He said it with such firm finality that it stole all the sharp retorts she was working on. She didn't want to fight him. She bit her lip and kept walking, determined that she was NOT going to just lie down in the desert and wait for her head to stop spinning from exhaustion.
The walk back was short and uneventful, thankfully. The rage that had got her back on her feet in the fight had burned out by the time they reached the train station, and she was left feeling cold and queasy. Unanswered questions hung in the air between her and Aymeric, who had remained mercifully silent for the walk back, but she got the distinct impression he'd simply paused their conversation and was gearing up for something that she was in no way equipped to handle right now.
Nitowikwe accepted the bag of pigments with a grin and a hefty clap to Azurae's back. She spared a few curious glances for Aymeric, her eyes catching on his sword and formal garments, but thankfully didn’t ask about his presence, or the cool glare he was leveling at the warrior of light.
"Many thanks as always, quality is beyond what we need as usual."
"No problem." Azurae ignored the huff of disbelief from Aymeric. "Anything else I can take care of for you?" She asked reflexively and wanted to punch herself in the throat as soon as the words were out her mouth.
Behind her, Aymeric started forward.
"Actually, I find myself in need of an escort back to the city. The desert is a dangerous place for the ill prepared."
Azurae glared back at him, but he gave her a cold smile, similar to the one she'd seen him use during debates in the house of lords when he knew he'd won, and was just waiting for his opponent to realize it.
"Nothing left on the to do list today anyways, you cleared everything up for us, as always!" Nitowikwe said with a cheerful flap of her hands, ushering them away so she could lock the doors behind them. "Time to be gettin’ home anyways." With another wave over her shoulder, she headed for the bustling tavern near the center of town.
Azurae huffed out a sigh and tried not to stagger. Ok. Now she just needed to get the very angry Elezen back to the city. Easy. Hopefully without any more questions. Then, maybe, even more hopefully, sleep. She doubted it, but she would force herself to lie in the bed for a few hours and pretend it was enough.
Aymeric had other plans. As soon as she turned towards him, intending to whistle down a ride to take them back to Tuliyollal, he spun and headed east with a determined stride.
"Hey! Where are you going? That's not-"
"I believe I spotted a lake earlier, and the Head of Resolve waxed eloquent at me for almost an hour about the quality of the fish in Shaaloani. It would be a disservice to the nation if I did not see them for myself."
Her protests fell on deaf ears as he continued to make his way quickly away from the settlement.
"It's dangerous out here!" she tried, trailing behind him. She was so tired, too tired, she couldn't deal with this.
"You are the warrior of light and I was the lord commander of Ishgard through the dying days of the Dragonsong war. Surely we can handle anything this desert can throw at us."
Then he turned his head, eyes sharp.
"Unless you don't think you can handle it."
Her ears snapped up, fury burning low and red in her chest. It was enough to galvanize her legs through the slog to the shores of lake Toari a few minutes later.
"Stunning." Aymeric breathed, taking in the enormous trees ringing the lake as it rippled with blue bioluminescence under the moonlight. "Full shame that I didn't bring my fishing tackle." He slanted another challenge at her. "I find myself of the mind to camp here tonight, if only we had some food."
"Unbelievable. Fine. Get a fire going, it gets cold out here." And she strode away with a flash as she snapped to her fishing gear. She didn't see the look of profound sadness cross Aymeric's face as he turned to gather some firewood, the familiarity of the situation made strange by her distance and annoyance.
Easier not to fight with him about this. He clearly had some kind of agenda, but she'd stuff some fish down his throat, strap him to the top of her alpaca, or the bottom if he protested too much, and be done with this day.
A few bad casts and some swearing later, she returned with two beautiful shaaloani salmon. Aymeric had been busy starting a fire and pulling up a couple of flat logs to sit on. As soon as she plopped the salmon on the flatter of them he shuffled her away and began expertly cleaning and filleting the fish.
"I always forget you know how to cook over a campfire." She muttered, as she settled against the other log with a soft groan, and pulled a blanket from the aether to wrap around her shoulders: she hoped he hadn't noticed the shivering that had taken hold of her. She didn’t need him to think she wasn’t even capable of keeping herself warm. Besides, she’d had to scout the camp site on her way back, so they didn’t get eaten by flying popotoes, or something equally embarrassing. The chill had settled in deeply, but she was confident they were safe. She could relax for a bit. Or try to.
Her leg started bouncing.
"You learn many things keeping an army alive. Being able to cook a warm meal is as important as weapon maintenance and reading the terrain."
He fixed her with another look.
"Almost as important as knowing when someone under your command has hit their breaking point."
She squirmed a bit, but she was clinging to her anger and the energy it was giving her. She hadn't gone too far. How would he even know? How would anyone know?
"Bold assumption. I'm still handling everything I need to, you just caught me at a bad time."
"A bad time?" He speared the carefully prepared fish fillets on a pair of freshly stripped tree branches with perhaps more force than necessary. "Az- My friend, your flame is guttering. If I hadn't followed you –yes, I followed you from the city, don't give me that look– those cerules would have had you. You've fought dragons and gods and monsters the likes of which I can only imagine. In what realm should those snakes merit more than a passing glance from you?"
Her blood was thrumming in her ears now. Embarrassment tinged the anger. And a horrifying echo, of a foe at the end of the universe demanding to know how she’d let something so small as the embodiment of despair slow her down.
How dare he. He didn't understand, no one understood, how could ANYONE understand- and something inside her burst.
"What am I supposed to do? Just...stop? I TRIED that. It didn’t work." She hissed, surprised at the force of her outbreak.
She couldn't stop the words. Months...years of frustration, exhaustion, rage, desperation all coiling around with nowhere to go spewed into the night air.
"There's always something else, there's always something that's going to end the world, always something only I can handle, gods dammit I thought coming to Tural was going to be a BREAK, and then there was the gate. I thought I could rest when the Scions disbanded, and then there was Pandaemonium. I CANNOT stop, because if I do, the world ends."
She pulled her knees up to her chest, the rushing hollow where the knot of emotions had been now filled with shame. Aymeric hadn't deserved that. None of this was his fault, apart from them being stuck out in the desert: the backlog of emotions competing to rip her asunder was HER problem to deal with. She couldn't look at him.
There was a moment of quiet, broken only by the sizzling of the fish and the soft night noises of the desert. When she finally lifted her head, she flinched at the hurt in his eyes. She looked away, flushing at how stupid she was being. She was fine, she just needed to continue stuffing down all these stupid crying feelings and she'd be-
"Why didn't you come back to Ishgard?" His voice was so soft she almost didn’t hear him.
"Are you fucking kidding me." She pulled her forehead tighter to her knees and couldn't stop an exhausted, hitching sigh from escaping.
"What? No, I-"
"No, no, it's fine. I should have known. It's never about how I'm feeling, it's always about something else-"
"Excuse me." The quiet rage in his voice stopped her short. "Why didn't you come back for HELP." The wind whoofed out of her lungs as she snapped her head up to look at him, then shied away from the anger and frustration on his face. "This was…gods dammit, this was why we- why I proposed our arrangement in the first place. To give each other a safe space to talk about things like this so they didn’t destroy us."
Well fuck. And now she felt like an asshole, on top of everything else. His diplomat mask was completely gone, and she could see the sad lines around his eyes, the deep turn of his mouth. Godsdammit.
She couldn't do this right now. She was too raw, she was just going to rub all her sharp edges on him and hurt him more than she already had. With a deep breath she carefully pulled her walls back up, settling her face into her best neutral expression and violently shoving all the unresolved tension deep, deeeeeeeeep into the back of her mind, along with the burning scratch in her throat that threatened to unmake her. He saw it happening and reached out, but she shook out her shoulders and stood, carefully arranging the blanket on the log behind her.
"Its fine. Really. Nothing I can’t handle." She tried a smile, but it felt brittle. She let it go.
"But you don't have to do this alone-"
"I really do. I should have known that. No one can help me. Not if they want to stay alive." She said it as matter of factly as she could, wanting to end this conversation more than anything in the world.
Too bad Aymeric was not interested in picking up on any of her cues tonight.
"I find that hard to believe."
She sighed and sat on the blanket. Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was being out under the stars, maybe it was the way the stupid firelight was getting caught in his hair...her heart kicked out a tiny brick in the walls she'd just erected.
“Anytime I start relying on others…they get hurt. Anytime I’m not enough, someone dies. Ardbert and Emet-Selch…gods, the Scions. I used to see their faces, in my dreams, when I slept, I watched them die, over and over…because I couldn’t do it myself. They had to throw themselves on the pyre to keep my flame going.” She stopped, pile driving the sob that was trying to force its way free back into the depths of her soul. “So yes. I do have to do it myself. I can’t let their sacrifices be for nothing. I have to keep going, I have to keep fighting. Even if-”
That was too much. Too far. She couldn't tell him the worst part. Couldn't tell anyone.
"Even if what?" he asked, his voice as gentle as the lapping of the lake behind them.
Nope. She shouldn't have said that. She slammed the brick back into the wall, kicked her bruised heart back down into the hole with the rest of the feelings she couldn't handle anymore and tore her eyes away from him. The anxiety, overshadowed by the anger and shame, reared its head again, and she found she couldn't sit anymore. Her leg was bouncing so hard she was rocking the log she was sitting on.
"I need a walk." She levered herself up and trudged towards the lake edge.
Aymeric watched her for a moment then checked to make sure the fish were off the direct heat, carefully banking them to slow their cooking. He contemplated what he was about to do, turning over all the options in his head, before coming to a firm conclusion. After listening to her talk he recognized so many of the warning signs that he'd felt himself and seen in his soldiers over the years and knew that she was slipping along a knife’s edge.
During his time on campaign against the Dravanian hordes he'd come close to tipping over this cliff himself: giving so much of himself and holding on to so much that his body became incapable of determining when he was actually under threat. Every minor inconvenience, every piece of bad news had turned into a full blown emergency, regardless of their actual impact, feeding into the runaway cycle of anxiety and panic. He'd been very lucky to have people around him who had been able to help him through the roughest spots, and he knew what had been the most effective for him when he was trapped so deep in his own mind that the anxiety made him feel like he was drowning.
He bit his lip. He didn't know if it would work for her. Or if it would just continue to fracture the relationship that they had once had. He huffed a breath out and stood, drawing his sword, deliberately letting it scrape against the scabbard so she could hear it.
He'd roll the dice. Maybe she’d wind up even more angry at him, but it wasn’t like things could get much worse between them. That traitorous part of his heart railed against the thought and he shook his head. If he had to sacrifice whatever was left of the only relationship he'd ever had where he felt truly himself and at peace to back her away from the ledge she was teetering on, then he'd spend the rest of his life celebrating from afar.
She had turned at the sound of his sword and stared at him as he followed her to the beach.
"Are you kidding me. What about this situation makes you think I want to spar?"
"We aren't sparring." He said, quiet, firm.
"What, you want to FIGHT me? Aymeric. Please." She rolled her eyes and started to turn away.
He couldn’t help the thrill that went through him at the sound of his name on her lips.
"I don't want to do anything of the sort. But you clearly have something riding you that needs an outlet, so it may as well be me."
"How about fuck off actually." she hissed, glaring.
He stepped forward and sliced down at her. It was so telegraphed that even the greenest recruit to grace the training grounds back in Ishgard would have had no problem dodging it. He hoped she found it insulting.
She ducked back with a growl, the anger back in her voice.
"Ok. Alright. Fine. But don't say I didn't warn you." With a flash, she pulled her befeathered, Turali style bow from the aether and bounced up onto her toes, glaring daggers at him.
The sight of her knocking an arrow sent another pang through him, a vicious reminder of the simpler times when she'd first come to Ishgard as a fresh faced adventurer with some very dangerous friends. He sent up a quick prayer to Halone that some day he’d again be able to count himself among their number.
And then she was firing on him.
It felt like she hadn't sparred with anyone in years. She whipped her bow around to block a swing from him and turned the hit into the momentum she needed to flip away from him. A quick breath into the bow's flute piece, a strum of the extra strings, and a thrum of power washed through her. She would try to avoid hurting him, she was mad, but he didn't deserve to get absolutely demolished-
A quick pivot and a solid THWACK from Aymeric caught her mid breath and sent her spinning. She landed hard on her ass in the sand.
"Ok motherfucker-" she tried to spring back up. Her knees were not up for it, so it was more of a stagger, but she managed to get upright.
"I recognize the song you sing friend, but such lyrics are unbecoming of you." He said, his voice light as he swung Naegling in a lazy circle before resettling it on his shoulder. So godsdamn casual. Then he swung at her again, neatly side stepping the three arrows she had tried to aim slightly to the left of him.
She stopped holding back. And realized, almost immediately, that she didn't stand a chance. Everywhere she went, Aymeric followed, letting her draw battle lines then immediately pushing past them, almost as if he wanted to see how she'd react. And she reacted pretty poorly. Her usual composed, precise strikes went wilder and wilder, arrows pinging more often against the ground or nearby trees than his armour as she went more and more feral.
Finally, a bad twist away from one of his thrusts pushed her body too far. She stumbled back, her ankle giving out, but Aymeric was right there, pushing her against a tree as she wrestled her bow between them. She pushed with all her might, grunting at the effort. She had held up the falling sword of a raging auspice once, all on her own. She'd batted stars and planets back at the god of eternal darkness. By the strength of her arms and aether alone she had saved the star over a dozen times.
But she couldn't move him.
They were both breathing hard, and in the moment of quiet as she tested her strength against his, she became excruciatingly aware of the feeling of his body pressed against the length of hers, and how close his face was, his intensely blue eyes boring into her as she tried to find an angle...and couldn't. Her arms shook with the effort of simply keeping Naegling at bay.
"Fine. You win. Happy?" she growled, with a furious huff of breath.
Immediately he moved back, his arm going out to catch her shoulder as she slumped towards the ground.
"No. How do you feel?"
She blinked and took stock. As the anger and humiliation over losing bled out of her, she could still feel the anxiety from the conversation they'd been having earlier, but...she squinted, surprised. Her arms and legs were shaking from the exertion, her heart pounding, but as she put her bow away, she felt her breath coming in deeper, more fully. As the shaking subsided it left behind good, clean exhaustion, not the antsy crawling tiredness that had plagued her for months. Her mind was flitting less quickly from thought to thought, and she found she could pause on particulars now. Like how distracting the faint sheen of sweat on Aymeric's brow was.
"I mean, not great, but...not as awful? What did you do?"
He shrugged, and sheathed Naegling. Then he rubbed ruefully at his thigh, where she had managed to land a few good hits early in the bout, and she tried not to smirk.
Heh.
"Something that worked on most new recruits who'd been through long, high stress patrols. They needed someone, or somewhere safe to let out all the energy they built up. Like opening a vent in an overloaded cerulean engine before it exploded. I think it gave their bodies a chance to feel that they had completed their duty, and that they were truly safe again, if they hadn't had a foe to unleash it on or held on too hard to the feelings after a fight. Burning it off in combat didn't always work, but I hoped...well, full glad am I that it helped, even if it was just a little."
She nodded, a little surprised. They'd never really talked about his time in the Ishgardian army before he was lord commander, and she suddenly had a bunch of questions.
"Do you find that you are unable to release your thoughts, even if they’re on matters that are beyond your immediate control?" he asked, starting to move back towards the fire.
She followed, and nodded slowly.
"I...guess. Though, there isn't much beyond my control at this point." She shrugged, somewhat helplessly.
"Ah." he said, settling down and pulling the fish back towards the heat. They smelled wonderful, and to her surprise and delight, her stomach gave a hopeful grumble. "Then perhaps you need to carve out time to find moments of release like this."
"As lovely as that sounds, I don't have time for things like this. Whatever this is. Not with..." she made a dismissive waving motion that somehow encompassed the entirety of the star. "Everything." she finished, somewhat lamely.
"Do you have time to breathe?" he asked, and she snorted.
"Obviously?"
"Azurae I have seen what happens to people who ignore the warning signs. Who kept going when they should have stopped, should have rested." He got a brief, far away look in his eyes, and his lips thinned. "I've lost too many friends, I couldn't bear to lose you too."
The rawness in his voice made her stomach do some uncomfortable flips.
"...I'm going for a swim."
Aymeric just nodded, and turned his attention back to the salmon, apparently also grateful for the small reprieve from the aftermath of their bout.
"Don't bean me with Naegling or anything while my back’s turned." She grumbled as she moved away, and was rewarded with something that surely was not a snort from his aristocratic nose.
She dipped into a bush near the lake and ditched everything but her smallclothes as she didn't have a swimming outfit stored in her aether. With a quick dash and a jump she was in the water, hoping the cold would help her calm down.
Because she was realizing how badly she'd fucked up by not bundling him back to the city immediately. Now that she was feeling the teensiest bit more level, the guilt over avoiding him after her return from Norvrandt was almost overwhelming. She kicked under the water to try and escape the shame.
He'd been one of the few people she'd been able to trust with her frustrations during the Doman and Ala Mighan liberations, and had been the only one who had understood the level of responsibility she'd been dealing with. She was pretty sure he'd taken comfort in the same from her: not a lot of people in the world knew what it was like trying to stitch together a country deeply divided by generational hatred, and she'd tried very hard to make sure she was there to listen and offer either comfort or suggestions, depending on what he needed.
And after Norvrandt she'd just...never gone back. At first she’d told herself it had been because she was way too busy trying to get her friends back from the First before they died. Seemed entirely reasonable that he’d understand she had pressing matters to attend to. Then there’d been the business with the androids and the dwarves and then the ongoing trouble in the Empty and before she knew it, it had been almost six months since her first return to the Source and she’d been too embarrassed about how long she’d left him without even a hello. Every day that passed added to her guilt, until even the thought of travelling to Ishgard for unrelated business was enough to make her stomach twist into anxious knots.
Gods she was awful.
But also how DARE he. Because that jolt of awareness she'd felt when he pinned her to the tree was the first time she'd felt anything even remotely close to desire in herself since the last time they'd been together, just before she'd been whisked away to the First. And it had done an excellent job of ripping the aching loneliness that had been lurking under the anxiety and the pain and saving the world to the surface.
And HOW DARE HE, look at her with his soft midnight eyes and tell her to her GODSDAMN FACE with HIS WHOLE CHEST that he couldn't stand to lose her. She screamed with frustration into the water, hoping the bubbles wouldn’t carry the sound to the surface and started swimming harder, trying to outpace the sadness and the hurt that had been writ large on his features when he said it.
The rage laps eventually died down as she quickly ran out of energy. She did a few dives under the surface, briefly tracing the patterns of the bioluminescent algae growing along the bottom of the lake. After a few minutes, with her arms and legs burning pleasantly in protest, she finally let herself float quietly on the surface.
High above, cold and sharp, the stars stared back at her. And between them...the dark. And she was reminded, as she suspected she always would be, of the crushing emptiness at the end of the universe, and the fight therein that haunted her every waking moment.
She floated for a long time, long enough for the cold to permeate every ilm of her before making her way back to shore and wrapping herself in her thick woolen cloak: she’d dry off in front of the fire for a bit before she put everything else back on. She gathered the rest of her clothes then triple checked that she wasn’t going to flash Aymeric.
Back at the campfire, he was studiously watching the two sizzling fish fillets. She couldn't help but notice the pinkness at the tips of his ears, and was confused at the look he gave her before snapping his gaze back to the fire, his blush deepening. She checked herself again, but the cloak was securely wrapped and belted...then she looked back to the lake and wanted to die. Between the moon above, painfully full and bright, and the algae glowing up from the lakebed, she suspected she had been almost perfectly illuminated for her little splash.
Great. Wonderful. She huffed out a laugh, wishing more than anything that she’d just stayed in the For’ard cabins this evening. However, she also could not ignore the heat that sparked deep inside her, at the thought of him watching her, and- she shook her head, hard, sending droplets flying off her ears. Bad rabbit brain.
"What else did you use to...vent your engines?" she asked, abruptly, as she perched on the log again, wringing her damp hair then letting it hang loose to steam in the heat from the fire.
"Ah, well." He seemed caught off guard, but then perked up, clearly happy that she was interested in the topic. "It varied, but most had something to do with physical activity. Sparring, running. There was one lieutenant who would dull dozens of axes chopping firewood. Another went for long walks along the ramparts. One of the more alarming was a private who would climb to the highest point of wherever we were stationed and simply scream."
"Scream?"
"Yes. Put the fear of Halone into us every time, I believe she single handedly frightened off a number of Dravanian attacks with her bellowing." he chuckled and his eyes got far away for a moment. Then his blush deepened. "And, of course, it wasn't the only reason, but it certainly was a reason, that there were very few soldiers in Ishgard without a lover or two." He kept his eyes fixed on the fire.
"I suspected." she muttered, then nodded. Ok. Easy fix.
She stood and started unbuckling the cloak.
Aymeric turned at the motion and his eyes bugged out a bit. Then he was scrambling away from her, his hands up in front of him.
"Ah! No, sorry, that was not- I don't-"
Azurae's face flamed solid red and she hastily rebuckled her belt, huddling even deeper into her cloak as she swiftly sagged back down against the side of the log.
Stupid. Gods DAMN her why couldn't she do anything right this evening. Couldn’t ever do anything right with him. He’d been back in her proximity for all of a few hours and she was already trying to use him to solve her problems. Again. Shame rushed through her, this time with a healthy dose of regret as she remembered how hard she’d come to rely on him when the Scions started dropping like flies, and how weak it had made her. How close she’d come to letting them all go, that one, awful moment where she’d nearly turned her back on them because of her selfish urges.
She dropped her head to her knees and seriously contemplated just walking out into the lake. She wouldn't feel stupid down there. She could just hang out with the fish and their empty heads and wait for the star to burn out. Yep. Great plan. Aymeric was still stuttering, and she wanted very badly to stuff her cloak in her ears.
"Please, my friend. I'm so sorry. It's not- this is not how I would rekindle things with you."
"No, no it's fine, I'm sorry. That was dumb."
"Az- no. Do not misunderstand, I would have you screaming into the night in a heartbeat, but I cannot in good conscience engage in...this, while I'm still..."
She buried her head even harder into her knees. Oh good. And now she was leading him on. Again. While he was still...what? Her heart sank. He hadn’t…he wasn’t still holding on to feelings for her? Oh gods. The anxiety was back, and now her mind was spiralling around the thought of him still putting her before the needs of his city, and how dangerous that was and this was why they had both agreed to NOT fall in love, gods DAMMIT.
He coughed, pulling her briefly out of her spiral.
"I'm afraid tonight has reminded me of many things, and some things that I clearly have not...handled yet. We were clear, when we embarked on our previous agreement that we, that this, was not meant to be a one night tryst. Neither of us were looking for release without-" he coughed again, "at least some amount of companionship outside the bedroom."
Well fuck. This was an even worse idea than it had been the first time, she realized with a sinking feeling. At least she’d had the excuse of being younger, and thus probably dumber back then, but now-
“Aymeric, this isn’t- I can’t-”
“Peace. Please. We don’t have to dredge up the past tonight, I do not wish to add to your burdens. I don’t know what happened in the First, or at the end of the universe, or how things got so broken between us. What I need you to know is that listening to your concerns, being a person you can confide in: it has never been a burden to me. And before we jump to something we may both regret, would you consider just talking to me first? As your friend, who is very worried about you?”
She stared into the fire, turmoil bubbling through her. This was how it had started last time. Just friends, talking through their problems with each other. Did she want to go down this path again? Was she strong enough to walk away from him again? Her bruised, battered heart punched up into her throat, hard, wanting so badly to turn into the comfort it hurt-
Then she felt him sit down, gingerly, next to her, and gently bump her with his shoulder. She looked back up: he was offering her a salmon fillet, his eyes scrunched in concern.
She sighed and took the salmon. They ate in silence, and to her shock, she was able to eat nearly the whole thing before her stomach rumbled a warning at her.
She'd really been hoping that maybe a quick tumble would magically solve everything whirling around in her brain, but now she suspected it would have had a similar effect to the fight they'd had earlier. Maybe it would help with some of the overwhelming stress that was bottled up inside her, but at what cost. He was being reasonable, and rational, and...how dare he. She’d just wanted things to be simple for a moment.
"I share the sentiment." he sighed. She hadn't realized she'd said the last bit out loud. Fucking hells she couldn't even trust her own mouth not to betray her anymore.
“I daresay neither of us have had many opportunities for things to be simple recently. If ever.” he said with a small rueful smile, clearly trying in any way to offer her some solace, even after everything she'd put him through. And that was the straw that broke the chocobo's back.
Maybe it was knowing that even after abandoning him he was still worried about her, maybe it was the lingering feelings she'd left smothered for three years, but it was like someone had kicked open the dam that she'd been stuffing every unshed tear behind since she'd been inflicted with the Echo.
She got her head down in time to hide her face, but the ugly, wracking sobs were hard to miss. Aymeric stifled a curse, then carefully put his arm around her shoulders. She clung to her cloak like it was a lifeline, because she was terrified that if she let go, she might throw her arms around him. He was murmuring quiet, insensible words into her ears as he pulled her in closer, and she let herself go, doing what she could do muffle her misery in her knees.
By the time the storm in her chest had blown itself out (and a headache had started building behind her eyes, fantastic), the fire had burnt down to embers. She sat, sniffling and wheezing a bit, tucked tightly into Aymeric's shoulder. At some point he’d wrapped his cloak around her as well as her blanket. She made a brief motion to pull herself away, but he simply tightened his arm, and she gave up immediately, too tired and too hurt to care that being this close to him again was probably a bad idea. Not wanting to break the moment just yet, she stared at the coals, at the way the red and black moved in ripples, the heat dancing slowly away, ruining what was left of the beautiful piece of fish he'd prepared her.
She felt another sob rise in her throat. And then she was talking, almost against her will, and entirely unable to stop herself for the second time that night.
"The worst part. About the fight with Zenos. At the end of the universe. I haven't told anyone about this. I can't. But if I don't I feel like I'm going to come apart."
Aymeric didn't say anything, simply squeezed her a bit tighter.
"When...when I got to the end, the fight with Meteion...I sent the Scions away, because I knew they wouldn't survive again. It was such an easy decision. I didn’t even have to think about it. And then when Zenos showed up and I realized I actually stood a chance against her, choosing to fight it out was also easy. It's always been easy to keep fighting. It's what I do."
She paused, taking a shaky breath.
"And then stupid Zenos decided that after we'd defeated the literal incarnation of despair that THIS was where we were having our last showdown...it was easy to stay. Because it was still easier to keep fighting even though I knew...I knew I was spent. For fuck sakes I ended that fight with a punch. Just my fist. Nothing behind it, my aether was so depleted I couldn't even switch soul crystals."
And it was like she was back there. In that great empty void, with the streaks of dying, spinning, forming stars all around. Listening to the slowing of Zenos' breath. The slowing of her own breath.
"So I kept fighting. And I didn't hold anything back. I ripped myself to PIECES on him. Because I realized..."
She trailed off. Screwed her eyes shut, trapped in a place Aymeric could only begin to imagine, by a foe he unfortunately could.
"I realized this might be it. This might finally be the end. And as soon as I knew that there was no one left to back me up, no miraculous save coming in from the universe...I felt relief." She choked back a slightly hysterical giggle. "Relief. That this might actually be the day that I...and then the fight just kept going and going and it was becoming more and more clear that Zenos had no intention of walking away and I wondered if it would just be easier to let this be both our ends. And then I started to hope."
Aymeric was silent, but she could feel the hitch in his breath when she said that. She plowed onwards. She felt like she was lancing a wound that had been festering for months.
"I hoped that this was it. Right time, right place, right psychopath...and I couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like. No more missions. No more ‘ohno only the warrior of light can save us’, no more world ending threats just...finally slipping into the aetherial sea for everything to be scrubbed away for a fresh start."
She took another deep, wobbly breath, and something between a laugh and a sob escaped her.
“I heard him stop breathing. I couldn’t move. I…could feel my breath slowing. I was starting to slip away and that…that was when I finally stopped fighting.”
She flicked her eyes up to the stars, wondering if she’d ever be able to find that place again, the place where her heart had stopped.
"When I came to on the ship, and everyone was there, and they were all so happy, and I knew how hard they must have fought to drag me back because I knew how far gone I was, but all I felt in that moment...I was angry at them. I didn’t want to wake up again."
She paused again.
"But I couldn't just jump out the airlock, because how fucking rude would that have been. Especially after all they had been through in Ultima Thule. But I was just so tired. Am so tired. And sometimes…sometimes I still wish I hadn’t woken up."
There was a long pause as her confession settled between them, broken only by the popping of coals from the fire. Then Aymeric squeezed her shoulder again, and she thought she felt his neck start to bend, but he stopped himself.
"I am so sorry my friend." he said, voice low and rough. "For how unfair the universe has been to you. And...for also being monstrously selfish."
Surprised, she looked up at him. He raised his hand towards her face, then stopped himself again.
"Full glad am I that you woke up. It breaks my heart to hear of the strain on yours, but imagining a world without you is like trying to picture the sky without the stars."
Her heart stuttered. She dropped her eyes and snorted, unclenching one of her hands to scrub at her eyes.
"We haven't spoken in years, I don't think I've been very illuminating in that time."
"You might be surprised."
There was a more comfortable moment of silence. She could feel sleep tugging at her in a way it hadn't in...gods, she couldn't remember. She wanted nothing more than to toss herself into that quiet, comforting abyss, but she felt a nagging in her brain. She couldn't fix the whole world tonight, but she could fix a hurt she had inflicted.
"Aymeric...I'm sorry I ran away."
"Think nothing of it, I surprised you and you were in the middle of something-"
"No, back...after Norvrandt. I was a mess, but that doesn't excuse what I did to you. It was cruel, and that's...I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you."
Aymeric hesitated for a moment, then let his head tilt to the side, so that it was resting against the soft dampness of her hair.
"I know you didn't. My hurt is mine to manage, but you have given me a great balm tonight." He pulled the blanket tighter around her, his movements gentle. "Now get some sleep."
To his relief, she closed her eyes and relaxed into his side. Her ragged breathing slowed, then steadied, while he watched the slow passage of the moons and tried to keep himself from weeping.
He’d been so wrong. She wasn’t slipping along the knife’s edge, she’d already plunged over the side. The Scions may have brought her body back, but her mind had not been so lucky. And unlike him, she had not had someone to show her how to bring herself back from the brink.
His arm shook where it was still draped across her shoulders.
Would anyone be there to catch her if she fell again? Would she reach out, if someone offered her their hand?
He took a deep breath, trying to move her as little as possible. It had been so much easier with his soldiers. In the absolute worst case scenario, he’d always had the option of locking them up, with guards to ensure they did no harm to themselves or anyone else until they’d worked through whatever was tormenting them. But with her? Even if he did manage to get her somewhere safe, she’d laugh her ass off at him, probably flip him the bird, then teleport straight into the nearest disaster zone. Halone’s breath, she was the twelve’s damned warrior of light, what chance did he have of keeping her from simply walking straight into her own end if that’s what she wanted?
He wrenched his thoughts out of the spiral. No. He knew her. Right? His mouth twisted, at least he could take some solace in the knowledge that there were probably less than a handful of entities left on Eitherys who could actually pose a threat to her. She was by far her own greatest danger.
And there was nothing he could do about that. Except…
Another steadying breath. It felt pathetic, like the worst platitude he could possibly offer her, but it was all he had. He pulled her in tighter, when she muttered something dark in her sleep. Whispered into her hair.
“I’m right here. I’ll always be here.”