Chapter Text
Amity sleeps. So does Gryff. The two birds sleep on either side of their campfire, exhausted from the day’s trek out into the western regions of Thanalan; the day under the hot sun kicking across the sweltering sands past dry scrub have left them bone-weary. Their feathers are much cleaner than they originally were at sundown, however, thanks to the tireless efforts of their owner, having preened them lovingly until the gleam returned to their feathers.
Zenos pays them little mind. Instead, he sits, elbows on his knees, fingers locked together as he looks at the form sleeping across Gryff’s wing. K’zhula’s chest moves slowly up and down, in utter tranquility as the firelight crackles, casting long shadows upon his face. It feels so rare, catching the other man in this kind of vulnerability.
Blond hair falls into his eyes, sparks popping lightly in the desert night, rising up to the heavens. Neither animal nor man stirs, however, leaving him alone to his musings. He idly tosses another branch onto the fire and sighs, looking up at the stars. To think, barely a few moons earlier had seen him travelling through the cosmos, his body powerful and resplendent as a primal; nary a few months had passed since his plea to the crystal had given him wings once more to aid his greatest friend. Back then, K’zhula had taken flight upon his back, soaring through the stars to fight against that abominable creature that threatened to end the Hunt once and for all.
Yet, as Zenos sits across this campfire from the man, he finds his chest tight in his tunic. Unknowingly, he undoes the top drawstrings, loosening the collar, letting himself breathe a little. He is closer now to the Warrior of Light than ever before.
How had things changed so immensely?
Unfeeling blue eyes glance over the comb still clutched in the other man’s hands, dusty from having cleaned the chocobos. Zenos frowns straight brows, a sour taste in his mouth despite the dry sand and dust floating in the breeze. His own hair, usually clean and smooth, is dusty, each strand coated in a thin film that invades his clothes, his hair, his very skin, baking him like a claypot.
Absently, he wonders how it would feel to be cared for by K’zhula, too, a comb run through blond strands from hands not his own.
Then, he stands, grabbing the pathetic, beginner adventurer’s sword which the Miqo’te had bought for him before their departure from Ul’dah. Silently, he stalks far over, far away from the campfire, away from the haven protected by scrub and cliff walls and lanterns. He glides silently through the night, drawing the sword until the campfire is but a pinprick on the horizon. His steps do not cease until he sees the shape of a serpentine beast in the wilds, wandering through the desert night. The beast, a peiste, freezes when he enters the vicinity. Neither creature reacts.
And then… he hears it. Distant, but steady. Hear… feel…
Zenos looks up at the heavens, eyes wide, fingers clenched around the hilt of his feeble blade, angry rising like a wellspring. To liken it to magitek fire, to voidsent shadows, to the repugnant aether of this realm, would do no justice to the explosive rage which rips through his veins at the sound. “Who are you?” he hisses. “How dare a remnant toy with me like this- you brought me back, but I am not yours. I was happy with my end, and yet you ripped that away-”
A single thought appears in his mind, the voice faint and feminine and so, so warm and worn that Zenos chokes on that flame in his throat.
You were not happy, you were content. There is a difference. A pause, whimsical, wistful. You will not walk tall by his side if violence is all you can bestow upon the world. He is too weary for that. He is too lovely for that.
The peiste skitters slightly, but it is not fast enough to withstand the merciless assault of his blade.
He slashes, he rends, he tears. At one point, he wonders whether the beast will be recognizable in the end.
The voice disappears. Zenos slaughters anyways. If his rage reaches the goddess to which he had supplicated himself in his search for godhood, he does not know.
When he can finally breathe, the rage and self-hatred and overwhelming disgust finally leave his brain, the vision of being pampered by K’zhula finally dissipating from his mind’s eye. With a shaky sigh, he draws himself up, skillfully flicks black, brackish blood off his sword onto the pooling, drenched sand, and walks back over to the campfire.
The sand does not shift under him when he retakes his seat. To his surprise, Amity opens one eye and looks at him, knowing; feathers raise from the back of the beast’s neck, and Zenos can only look down at his chest. His assault on the peiste had been clean, but a tiny splash of blood had stained the carbuncle pin which attaches his cape.
Something in his gut twists at the sight. He wipes it off absently on his thumb, then the sand. The beast watches him with a wary eye, large and endless, black and knowing. It stares unblinking, reflecting the flickering flames dancing on Zenos’ own visage.
Zenos looks at K’zhula, then lifts a finger to his lips, signaling the bird’s silence. To his surprise, Amity nods back, nestling his beak into the Miqo’te’s hair as he returns to slumber. A few more branches are tossed into the campfire, the heat nothing in the face of this ache in his chest. The Garlean can only watch, ever the outsider, fingers pressed in the dirt and sand ferociously to cleanse the taint in his touch, the carcass of a serpent slain in yonder distance in his wake.