Chapter Text
It went like this: Ishgard had found itself at peace for the first time in generations, which meant there was time to think about different kinds of violence. Wrenching, internal change. Conflicts under the banner of their newly recovered allies. Such was the nature of a faithful nation. A martial history. A godly history.
The Scions left, because they, too, had formed a habit of always seeking dawns. Which meant that in the face of a bright blue sky, the only thing to be done was to go looking for new darkness to push through. However. The Warrior of Light stayed behind. Or, the woman who had worn the armor of that name stayed behind. Because all things should get to have an end. Existence under a bright blue sky.
She could see her cynicism for what it was, but that didn’t make her wrong.
Rinh exhaled into her cupped palms, her breath only marginally warmer than the frigid air. She should’ve worn gloves. It was good to view the city from this vantage from time to time, though she supposed Haurchefant wouldn’t have shared her impressions. She patted the headstone beneath her. “It’s fortunate you won’t see me like this,” she said.
Haurchefant’s body had never actually left the city. Too many wyverns and wolves to come scratching outside the gates. But he would’ve liked the memorial — appropriately sentimental, and far enough away not to cause trouble (as he should be). “You’d probably tell me it’s okay,” she said. “But I think you’d be disappointed.” She pushed herself upright, cold fingertips sticking to the stone as she pulled away. The frost still didn’t sit well with her. Sometimes, she had to wonder why she seemed to pick the places and people she didn’t fit properly. An opportunity for growth, or a pathology, or an inconsequential cruelty of fate. She could run herself in circles but she’d land where she started.
“I do not think he could conceive of such a thing.” Aymeric’s voice curled across the frigid air, louder than she expected though she’d heard his approach. The wind was almost always howling in Coerthas, but the day was sunny and calm. The snow glittered like a great field of crystal, reflecting so bright she had to make a point not to look down. Rinh turned to find the Lord Commander. He nodded at her, moving until they were side by side across from the great expanse of sky between Haurchefant’s lookout and the steep, isolated rise of Ishgard. He stared out at his home, gaze steady and unreadable.
It wasn’t terribly surprising that he’d found her; over the moons she’d made a home in his city, he’d proved quite adept at finding her (incidentally). Which might’ve been her doing more than his, returning to haunt the places he’d shared with her, but hadn’t seemed worth parsing at the time. Lately, however, it felt relevant. Or Rinh had far too much time. So it goes.
“You’re probably right,” she said. “I’m just — ” Rinh didn’t have a satisfactory conclusion to that thought. It had been two moons since they’d all gone their separate ways and she had stayed still. She’d left the Scions in Ysayle’s care. Estinien had left Ishgard, and Aymeric, in hers. The Lord Commander didn’t press her for an answer, standing beside her in easy silence.
She and Estinien had talked about their plans at length — to the extent Estinien talked about anything at length — in hushed whispers on crooked rooftops, before he’d left the city. She’d had enough wandering for a little while. He needed a new view. They’d agreed that their bones ached. It wasn’t an answer then, either, but it had been enough to act on. After all this time, she supposed she should have been used to it.
“Take care of him, Rinh, would you?” He’d said before he left, softer than she’d thought the dragoon had in him, and she’d wondered if she ever really did choose anything just for herself.
“Are you planning to be out here much longer?” Aymeric asked, something careful in his tone that made her stomach turn. It wasn’t that she was unwelcome in the city. Far from it. But things were different. She shook her head. He was still staring off toward Ishgard’s spires. There had always been an understanding between them. Like calls to like, or something like that.
She wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean now. The assumption of transience, whether to be a consequence of her mortality or divine blessing notwithstanding, had made the great feverishness of being known seem survivable. They had probably gotten too comfortable with standing too close to the proverbial fire. Easy enough, when it was always going to go out. Well.
Rinh couldn’t complain. She’d decided to stay, after all. And Aymeric would never complain. Endurance could be considered a virtue or a sentence, really, and it didn’t seem like that was for her to decide. Wherever he arrived, she told herself she’d know.
When she shook her head, Rinh schooled her expression into the practiced neutral that had carried her through far more fraught times.
“’Tis for the best, I think. The sun can be deceptive and I would prefer if you did not catch your death.” He said it lightly, a joke maybe, but it drew her attention to his face sharply either way. Aymeric had finally deigned to look at her, and he was smiling. It was in his eyes more than it was on his lips, only the barest upward quirk of the left side of his mouth. She wished it didn’t push the air out of her lungs with such force, but the familiarity of it made her chest squeeze painfully. Had she missed this? Better not to ask.
After a moment’s hesitation, he held out a pair of gloves.
They were beautiful, dark kid leather, and daintily small by Elezen standards. They had been so obviously crafted for her it took her aback. “For you,” he said, when she didn’t reach for them. She took them carefully. They had been cut without fingertips besides the thumb, to accommodate both her need for dexterity and the feline stiletto of her nails, and lined with silk. Deep, rich, blue silk. Rinh glanced back up at him. “I hope you do not mind the liberties I took,” he said. Blue, blue, of course he’d pick blue.
“But I thought that you should have a pair of your own, like any proper Ishgardian.”
She didn’t say anything for far too long to be polite, gripping the soft leather so tightly in her hands her nails dug into her palms. Rinh wasn’t a proper Ishgardian. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be. But she’d never been sure she wanted to be a Scion or anything else that had attached itself to the fabric of her history. The gloves would have cost at least twice the modest allowance she’d earned from the Scions each moon, probably more. Rinh didn’t really want to think about that.
She said, “thank you.” And put the gloves on. Blue silk cocooned her hands and nobody would know. Fine black leather and a little, trivial secret.
Somehow, she thought Aymeric looked just a little relieved. Had she missed this?
“Did you know I’d come out?” she asked. He shrugged, that strange little smile tugging just barely at his lips again. Of course he did. He held out a hand, asking wordlessly for her own. Her bare fingertips drifted against his. He was always so warm. “Lord Commander?”
“I had a feeling,” he said, quiet in the snow. His voice seemed to curve around her. It was so still out there, so quiet, so bright. She swallowed hard, caught like a rabbit in a trap as his fingers curled around her hand and she found herself pinned under his gaze. A little too close to the fire, was it? She watched his gaze rove her face, looking for signs of — it seemed best if he found nothing. For both of them. She really didn’t know how to pick the right place to land. Never had. It might have been too needlessly self-indulgent to suppose she ever would.
Right around the time she realized she’d forgotten to keep breathing, he let her hand go. “Shall I walk you back?” he asked. She nodded numbly. He hadn’t come to stay for long. It seemed Ishgard’s Lord Commander might have come looking specifically to bring her back. And to give her those gloves. It made something strange and restless twist in her gut. She couldn’t have put words to it if she tried, like it was somewhere between thinking she should’ve left with her title and understanding the true nature of an inescapable, fatalistic undertow. It could’ve been anything, really.
Rinh folded her hands carefully at her waist as they traced the half-formed path back from the memorial toward the Gates of Judgment. The gloves sat like a second skin over her fingers, so well fit that she wondered how they’d been made without her direct measurements. Warm. His hands were always so warm.
She kept walking, filing behind him and stepping gingerly in his footprints through the snow. “How are the discussions going?” she asked. He made a vague and noncommittal sound in response.
“Ser Artoirel has been well accepted as Speaker,” Aymeric said. “He will work across the Houses more adeptly than I could, I have no doubt.” She inclined her head. It wasn’t what she was asking and he knew it, but she bit her tongue. He didn’t owe her answers and it wasn’t as if she knew what she’d do with them anyway. “And there is some consensus publicly that I should retain my position. Ishgard…” he stopped walking so abruptly that she almost collided with him. Turning to face her, like he needed to look her in the eye when he spoke, he said: “I cannot change everything.”
She stared at him. She hadn’t asked him to. She hadn’t asked him to change anything at all. If anything, he’d asked her to change —
Rinh licked her chapped lips. “I don’t expect so,” she said. He reached to cup her face in his large hands, bowing suddenly to bring his forehead to hers. An uncomfortable ache in her chest. Little thing fluttering, starting to wonder about a world bigger than the cage of her ribs again. What a terrible thing to do. She knew better. Had always known. Aymeric was nothing if not horribly, painfully honest.
But she still closed her eyes. Let him tip her chin up toward him until she could feel his warm breath on her tongue. He didn’t kiss her (of course not). “Are you happy?” she nearly choked on the question, eyes flying open to find his shut. The softest whisper, a little hoarse, a little hopeful. If she moved, just the barest shift toward him, just the smallest acknowledgment of gravity, she might be —
“I’m,” she started, because she had to. “I’m where I want to be right now.” She swallowed hard. “If I can be helpful too then,” she shrugged. He couldn’t see, but she did it anyway. He stayed still, eyes shut, cupping her face to hold her unfairly near, until she thought maybe he’d managed to miss everything she’d said. It felt like he was counting each breath in his head, measuring time out of necessity or in spite of it.
Rinh hadn’t quite realized Aymeric de Borel had become someone that could break her heart, but the look on his face when he finally stepped back from her nearly did. “Of course,” he said gently. “You are always helpful.”
He turned back toward their walk. The Lord Commander led her back through the Gates of Judgment without saying more, and Rinh felt very small in the city she’d chosen to get lost in.
It went without saying that they prepared to go their separate ways as the gates closed behind them. “I hope to see you again soon, my lady,” he said. A perfect bow at arm’s length. Rinh made a mental catalog of her own face, the set of her shoulders. Distance could be its own kind of art. “And, I am— that is, I hope you will find Ishgard is what you need her to be. We are ever in your debt.”
It shouldn’t have hurt to hear him say. But she thought that, maybe, it did. Just a little. It wasn’t like she couldn’t be happy.
“Thank you again,” she said. “For the gloves.”
Aymeric decided not to think too hard on her answer, or her non-answer, as he trekked back to the Congregation. Lately, it felt like an act of stubbornness to continue to return to his office there. Much like when he’d first taken the post and nobody seemed to know what to do with him, the Lord Commander found himself clinging to the trapping of his position more than he liked. A loyal dog, forever returning home. It didn’t matter too much if it was where he was wanted.
Lucia and Handeloup were waiting for him by the entrance. After everything, they still didn’t enter his spaces without permission. He didn’t mind. It was its own sign of closeness to know that he preferred to keep his things to himself. “Lord Commander,” Lucia said first, frowning at the frost clinging to the dark waves of his hair. Neither would ask him where he’d been, nor why, but the First Commander did not need to approve of his solitary trips. If she’d been pettier, she might’ve reminded him that it hadn’t been so long ago that there’d been an attempt on his life. And if Aymeric had been as petty in return he would’ve surely reminded her that they had, until only lately, been fighting a war much bigger than any of them. Par for the course.
“Did I keep you waiting long?” Aymeric asked. “I did not mean to.” Mostly true. He had no interest in inconveniencing his trusted circle, those knights who had endured both his ambition and the gall he had to be cross about getting everything he wanted. Well. Mostly true. He’d gotten the things that were supposed to matter and everything came with a price. He knew that painfully well.
“No, not long. But the Synod has sent another missive,” she said. Aymeric rolled his shoulders, unlocking the door to his office and pushing through with more force than strictly necessary. His First and Second Commanders trailed after him.
“I should expect so. They are nothing if not consistent. Have they anything new or worthwhile to say this time around?” He reached over his shoulder for the letter without looking back. Handeloup passed him the folded parchment.
“We did not wish to open your correspondence, but the courier suggested a… fair compromise,” Lucia said.
“There is also the matter of House Durendaire,” Handeloup said.
Aymeric found the bell pressed in wax on the letter. Northward.
Aymeric had found Count Charlemend to be pliable to the new design of Ishgard’s political architecture, though it could hardly be called a natural adjustment. He had to respect the earnest effort. Noblesse oblige, at its purest refinement — for whatever that was worth in the new order. And there was the matter of history still propping up every pillar of his own tenuous influence. His thumb swept over the contours of the seal. It had probably only ever been a matter of time. Not precisely unexpected.
“’Tis at least a small irony, in the end.” Aymeric took the letter to his desk and settled in the stiff-backed chair that had, at some point, gone from a discomfort to something like a source of confidence. Old friend. He slipped a thin blade under the wax seal. Lucia and Handeloup waited patiently, flanking the doorway and entering no further.
They waited for a long time. Aymeric had surely read the letter over at least twice and still, they waited. His sigh was long and bone-weary.
“I never thought that I should become particularly attached to my post,” Aymeric said. “We were always dying for our ideals, or forgetting ourselves entirely.”
Lucia did leave her place by the door then, crossing to stand at his side. For a moment, Handeloup thought she might try to provide some sort of reassurance; a hand on their Lord Commander’s shoulder. But none of them touched him. They never did, except Ser Estinien, who never seemed to do so on purpose. The Second Commander watched Lucia carefully curl her hands into measured fists at her sides.
“What are they asking of you, Aymeric?” Handeloup blinked in surprise at the familiarity. But then, he felt it too. Aymeric had not held uniform loyalty among the Temple Knights. In enough ways, he had not been the obvious choice. But to those who had bothered to follow, to watch him closely; the Temple Knights that had marched forward where Aymeric had gone knew he had been the right choice. It was hard to say if the late Archbishop had understood, but Handeloup and Lucia did.
“I shall keep my place here, so long as I serve it capably at the behest of the people,” Aymeric said with a wry smile. “And the Synod — with the support of our most noble High Houses — ask that I consider the stability of our faithful brothers and sisters.”
Aymeric tossed the letter onto his desk and Handeloup approached to read it himself. Lucia watched Handeloup’s expressions shift as he scanned the parchment. “Lord Commander,” Lucia said slowly. “You have never struck me as devoted to theology.”
The smile that lingered on his lips never quite reached his eyes. “Only in so much as it ever served the truth,” he said.
Handeloup set the letter back down on the desk. “It is far more compromise than I would have expected of the Church,” he said, and sounded guilty for admitting it. “Such are the times, perhaps.”
“Such are the times,” Aymeric echoed.
They did not ask him if he intended to accept their terms or what it would mean for the faithful knights of the Holy See. It was enough that Aymeric did not pen a reply before he left the Congregation of Knights Most Heavenly after sundown. “In a way,” Handeloup began. “The Church suits him too.”
Lucia’s taciturn expression shuttered further. “The Church has a habit of putting him in chains,” she said. But she didn’t say the Second Commander was wrong.