Work Text:
He found her crying in the bathroom, a pair of scissors in her hand, chunks of white hair littered around the washbowl. It was a sight he wouldn’t forget anytime soon.
Aymeric didn’t know everything that had happened in the First. Aryae had told him some of it, bits and pieces, but the shadows under her eyes and the tremble in her hands had been more of a concern to him than the stark difference in her hair, and it had kept him from prying for more information that first night.
When she had left, spirited away by whatever force had pulled the rest of the Scions from their world to the other, her hair had been a deep red. A beautiful colour that he very much enjoyed seeing splayed across the pillows of their bed.
When she returned, weary and stumbling to the Borel Manor in Ishgard, it had taken him a heartbeat longer to recognise her than it should have, with her hair snowy white. But it didn’t matter, of course, just having the Warrior of Light home and safe was all he could have ever wanted.
The next morning purchased him more time to see the changes in her appearance, as she slept curled at his side. He ran a hand idly through her hair, unnerved a little by the slight coolness it left in his fingers. Her skin was paler, though the change wasn’t quite so obvious. Later, long after the arm under her had been dead to the world, Aryae had awoken. And at that distance, with the morning light shining through the bedroom window, he could see that her eyes were lighter as well. Their colours still discernable, but only just.
He still didn’t ask, when she tensed away from the hand she felt running through her hair. He had seen that haunted look before, after battles she had lost or people she had been unable to save. When she was ready, she would tell him.
So when, in the middle of the night after a few days had passed, he awoke to the other side of the bed empty, Aymeric quickly arose and set out through the manor to find where Aryae had gone.
The sight that met him in the guest bathroom caused his fingers to clench into a fist at the pain he felt in his heart. He could hear the quiet sobs before he was close enough to see the tears. They almost muffled the sounds of the scissors hacking away at the hair she gripped in her other hand, fingers white and strained from how forcefully she was gripping the locks.
“Aryae?” He waited to speak her name when she had finished cutting another piece, the scissors safely away from her body. The violent startle in her hands and the way she spun to face him showed that she hadn’t heard him approach, a feat he had never before been able to do after her years of training in battle. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He added, stepping forward and reaching to place his hands on her arms.
She was cold and trembling. A mere shadow of the woman he had seen stand at the frontlines and lead armies to victory, and his heart ached to see it. He pulled on her arms, but she resisted the tug that normally would have brought her into his embrace. Her eyes were averted, refusing to meet his gaze. He wanted to touch her face, to try and bring warmth back into her pale cheeks, but he was afraid to do anything that would cause her to pull away from him.
“I’m here.” He finally said, after weighing his words heavily in his mind. “I’ll always be here for you, my love. Whenever you’re ready to talk.”
She nodded, and he released his grip on her arms. After another moment of silence, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He breathed words of love against her skin, and heard her whispered response before he returned to bed.
The next morning, he made no mention of the shortness of her hair or the swollen redness around her eyes.
It was two more days before she really began to speak, to tell him of all the things that had befell her in the other world. He learned of the First, of the sin eaters, of everything that she had seen while away. Her voice was steady until she spoke of Tesleen, and its first break was when she told him of the light she had absorbed from the first lightwarden’s defeat.
Throughout her story of pain, hardship, and eventual victory, he held her. Through the tears, anger, and what very little joy she was able to feel even when speaking of the defeat of another Ascian. She was vulnerable, a state he so rarely saw in her, and it cause him to hold her just a bit closer, as if to shield her from the memories she was reliving.
And the next morning, when he awoke to his hands in her hair, she didn’t flinch away. He caught the shadow of a smile and knew that she was back home with him, at last.