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You have many names. Saviour, slayer, healer, mender and maker, a wealth of titles that describe what you do, though none of them say who you are. So you understand why G’raha Tia cries when you whisper his. By naming him, you’ve captured the essence of the Baldesion scholar and the venerable ruler all in one. Whole, united; a little like how you feel, now that Emet-Selch’s tragedy has restored the balance to your own blemished soul.
You say his name as often as you’ve wanted to say it since you first came to this reflection. Partly to reaffirm to him, to you, who he is, and partly because that teasing streak hasn’t quite been worn away by your stoic hero’s mask.
It’s on the tip of your tongue when you’re sent back to the Source, and you’re barely out of the portal when it slips past your lips a mere fortnight after you first left.
“My friend,” the Exarch says, sounding surprised and relieved all at once, “I hadn’t expected you so soon.”
“Well, G’raha Tia,” you reply, relishing in the crimson across his cheeks as it spreads with your words. “I thought there was more I could help with here.”
“Always the helper,” he murmurs. It’s true: you’re afflicted. “I hope you’re had time to rest, at least?”
There’s a moment where you eye him, guilty, and he spreads crystal and spoken hands in a gesture of defeat. You cannot be stopped in your quest to help as many people in as many ways as possible: the Crystal Exarch understands this more than most. It’s why despite his secrecy and his thwarted sacrifice, you get on very well indeed.
“Who needs me the most?”
Your inquiry is not quite innocent; G’raha’s ears twitch in surprise before his ruler’s mask comes down once more.
“If you can’t be convinced to take it easy,” he considers, “then Katliss and the others have been asking for more supplies for the Crystarium newcomers.”
You wanted him to say he needed you the most, but this answer is almost as good. Because you know there are fights still to be fought, battles in which you could triumph easily where others fail: and yet despite that, the Exarch tries to turn your hand to making and mending. Skills you don’t get much time to indulge in in these troubled times.
“I can do that.”
The reply is softly spoken, and you share a smile before sweeping past him and out once more into the public eye.
Katliss looks surprised to see you but she covers it with grace, her smile turning to genuine pleasure as you stride towards her desk.
“If it isn’t the Warrior of Darkness,” she exclaims, and you hear the ringing of a dropped hammer in the forge behind her. “What can the Mean do for you today?”
“Actually,” you begin, but you’re interrupted by the gathering crowd. They’ve come to listen to your words, you worry, come to hear if there is any sage wisdom the so-called saviour of the First can give them, but really you’re only here to help.
In the past this would have made you retreat into your shell, the attention of so many people on an adventurer who just happened to have a blessing unlike many others. You’ve worn the mantle of hero for so long, now. There are times when you weary of it, heavy as it feels. But as with all things there is value in it, because this isn’t the first adoring crowd you’ve seen and though you wish otherwise it will not be the last.
“The Crystal Exarch sent me,” you say, standing your full height and schooling your face into a semblance of easy calm, “to see if there was anything I could do to assist.”
In reality you want nothing more than to feel the heat of the forge as it kisses your face. Or to spend an afternoon under the pearlescent blue of the Mean’s many canopies, stitching together the threads of someone else’s story.
It is not to be. Katliss, bless her, notices the way your gaze sweeps the crowd, the rigidity of your stance and she smiles with something akin to empathy.
“There is a herb,” she muses, “that we’ve been wanting to get a hold of for a while now.”
You nod: there is always a herb to be gathered, for food or for healing or for the more nefarious arts of poison and pain.
“It grows down on the Thirstless Shore, but with the darkness as of late we’re discovering that the sands…” she pauses. “Well, let’s just say it’s a dangerous place for people who don’t know how to equip themselves.”
So it’s another fight, you think, and there is an instant where the weight of expectation clouds your vision before you dredge up a smile for the leader of the Mean.
“Of course,” you acquiesce. “Let me just get a description of what I need, and then I’ll be on my way.”
Someone asks if they need to come along to gather while you watch for danger; you manage to refuse with all of your practised diplomat’s grace, stating that you’ve picked a few herbs in your time. The old you, before Ishgard, would have barked that you can tell one end of a scythe from the other and there is a squeeze of gratefulness in your chest at Alphinaud’s well-meaning lectures on the benefits of niceties.
Really, you need to be away from it all, if they won’t let you work. It’s one of the reasons why you returned here so soon: Tataru’s folded arms and disapproving expression if you so much as set foot in the practice yard outside Revenant’s Toll was something you couldn’t stand any longer.
That, and the wistful, mischievous urge to spend some time with someone you thought you’d lost forever.
It’s with this in mind that you trudge along the well-trodden path through the Forest of the Lost Shepherd, barely heeding Lyna’s somewhat bemused greeting. You could ride, but you don’t: before you were the Warrior of Darkness, or the Warrior of Light or even before you were an Eikon Slayer you were an adventurer. And as you’ve always privately held, an adventurer has to rely on their own two feet before anything else.
Besides, it’s a beautiful afternoon, darkening prettily into blessed night. You notice the sights more these days, bereft of darkness as this land had been for so many years. And though it is unwanted the people’s adoration for you makes sense, when you turn your face to the shore and see the rippling moon reflected on the waves.
With a pleased sigh, you bend to your work. There are some few crabs lurking around the water, but aside from them you cannot fathom what danger Katliss spoke of, until you hear a soft tune that sounds as though it is being sung by the waves themselves.
It’s not until an impossibly smooth hand grasps your elbow that you realise you’re waist deep in cold, cold water. And it’s not until the Exarch calls your name with such panicked desperation that you realise you would’ve walked under the surface to hear more of that sweet song.
“Oh,” you say, somewhat stupidly, staring into his crimson eyes as his crystal hand tightens around the soft skin of your arm. “What am I doing?”
He looks relieved beyond belief to see sense come back into your gaze. “You were charmed by the Bismarck’s song,” he explains. “When Katliss told me she’d sent you down this way…”
You notice he hasn’t let go, gripping you with an intensity you know will leave bruises. You do not shake him off, still a little dazed; the cool touch of his crystal fingers on your colder skin feels…
“I can breathe,” you mumble, and he leans a little closer to hear your words, “underwater.”
G’raha blinks at you in genuine surprise and you remember that you could not do that when he knew you last. That you’re much changed from the young adventurer who used to pour over texts in the hope of finding a way into the Tower.
“I didn’t know that,” he replies, finally letting go of your hand. His ears flick once, twice, and you know they are responding with all the turmoil that he cannot freely show. It endears him to you even more, and so when you follow him out of the water and wade to the shore, you chirp,
“Well, I’m glad that I can still surprise you!”
You meant it jokingly, but the Exarch’s face is solemn.
“You surprise us all,” he says with his ruler’s voice, but you want the other G’raha Tia right now, the vaunted marksman and aspiring scholar and lover of adventure.
“I’m fine,” you say, laying a hand on his arm. It’s a little daring, to touch him so easily, but you rationalise that he touched you first. He looks down at it, your skin stark against his pale blue crystal. “But what a long and watery adventure that would have been!”
At this, he grins, and for all his claims he is an old man you know the truth. “Indeed,” he says. “I suppose I’ve saved you a cold, wet walk.”
“And from another lecture from Feo Ul, I should imagine.”
There’s a moment where you both hold back a laugh: in this as with little else, you lose, hands splayed on wet knees as you imagine your beloved fae friend swirling into existence to give you and Bismarck a thorough scolding. G’raha Tia might not have saved your life - this time - but he saved you this, and when he holds a hand up to cover his own laugh it spurs you into fits.
“Oh G’raha,” you say without artifice, because in this moment you are not Exarch and Warrior but two old friends, “however can I repay this mighty and noble deed you’ve done?”
The Exarch seems to have forgotten all the titles that stand between you as well, because he grins cheekily, the tips of his hair wet and clinging to his cheeks as he gives you what you can only describe as a salacious wink.
He isn’t even blushing, and though your clothes are clinging to you with the chill of approaching night your own face feels hot at his unexpected tease. It is not often that someone gets the better of you in mischievous play. You do not intend to start here.
“I have some ideas on what I could do,” you begin, and at this his face colours with an alacrity that speaks to his long-hidden shyness. “For starters…”
His ears flick up and down, and though you cannot see his tail you can practically feel the way it is rigid with anxious anticipation. You take your time rising to your full height again, savouring the way his eyes follow the smooth movement.
“For starters, I’ve heard you’re a rare singer. Do you think you could beat a lord of the faerie in song?”
“You,” G’raha replies, folding spoken and crystal arms across his chest in amused disbelief, “are wicked.”
“Mm.” Your agreement makes him shake his head with obvious fondness, and as he walks away from the water’s edge you follow behind him, admiring the way he moves. “Some here say I’m the greatest sinner of all.”
The smirk he throws you over his shoulder leaves you breathless.
And it’s with laughter and conversation that you return to the Crystarium gate with herbs securely fastened in your belt. There’s a few paces between you both and the corner that will yield the guardhouse into view, so you hold up a hand and the Exarch pauses. Under the gathering night his skin sparkles with something like glimmer; to your aether-sensitive gaze he is beautiful, crystalline as his palace, but with the warmth of a person beating at his core. Your words die on your lips and he follows your hesitance curiously, tilting his head to the side to encourage you to continue. He hasn’t yet put his cowl back over his face; he keeps it down when you’re alone, a layer of formality stripped away forever.
“Katliss…” you begin. “Please, I don’t want you to rebuke her for sending me to the shore tonight.”
He frowns, and you know then that he was going to do just that. The people closest to you are protective: more so now that they almost lost you once.
“People think the Warrior of Darkness is invincible,” you coax him, “but you know I’m not. Just as you know they need to believe that.”
“But-”
“No,” you interrupt, and part of you wants to put a finger to his soft lips but you resist, “it’s enough that you knew, and you came to get me. I don’t need everyone to know who I am.”
He stills, because he understands. You only need a handful of people to know that you have weaknesses, and your burden will be lightened immeasurably; oh how he must feel that too.
“How did you know I’d be affected?” you ask, curious.
G’raha’s hands still in their path to his cowl, his palms resting against his neck as he looks up at the full moon. “Because you’re drawn to beautiful things.”
It surprises you, not because it isn’t true - it is - but because it is something that not all of your closest friends have realised. That in your spare moments you walk the hills and glens of Coerthas, that you love to spend time in the Azim Steppe just to hear the people sing. That creation piques your interest as much as your inevitable draw to destruction.
“And so I came,” he continues, and you chase his gaze as he pulls his cowl up to hide his face, “because I’m drawn to beautiful things, too.”
There is no mistaking what the Exarch means and your lips part, ready to affirm or confirm or say something that will set you both on the next step, but his finger comes to your lips, like you had wanted to do to him. He shakes his head, expression hidden but wry smile clear.
“Not here,” his murmur is as warm as his finger and you have to try very, very hard not to kiss the callused pad before he pulls away. “Not like this.”
You do not agree. But there is something in you that wants to know where , and in what way G’raha means, and so when you trail behind him into the Crystarium proper your steps echo behind him with as much intensity as your gaze on his features. He feels it: you can’t see his ears, but there is a twist to his lips that makes him speak with more formality than normal to the Ocular guard, causing the man to salute and usher you in on your no-doubt serious business.
It will be, you think, all over the tavern in an hour. The Crystal Exarch and the Warrior of Darkness in some important, awe-inspiring conversation, discussing matters sure to affect all of Norvandt, serious and solemn like the pillars of society that you both are.
It does not happen like this. Instead, you hold back a gasp as G’raha winds crystal fingers between yours, pulling you with surprising strength deeper into the tower, into the recesses where he’d told you before that nobody came. A frisson runs down your spine as his fingers tighten around yours, the coolness of him nice against your heated skin, letting yourself be led through myriad corridors that spin like a labyrinth in your head.
You would be lost forever if he wasn’t guiding you; but isn’t that true of your whole time on the First? It brings a smile to your face that he catches, and as he’d thrown down the cowl when the door closed you watch with anticipation as his ears move with pleasure at your joy.
“What is it?” he asks, slowing to a stop before a door as imposing as the rest.
“I don’t know,” you say, before correcting yourself, “you, I think.”
“You think?”
With his eyebrows raised and his head tilted in amicable curiosity G’raha looks less like the wise and powerful ruler and more like the young Baldesion you had first met. Happiness suits him. And fleeting as you know it to be, you’re not one to shy away when it stares you in the face.
“It depends on what’s behind that door,” you tease. “And what happens when you close it behind us.”
He doesn’t waste time and the sturdy Allagan constructions swing open soundlessly, spreading wide to show you an arboretum in miniature, trees from all the lands of the Source sprawled across an endless carpet of grass. Like everywhere else on Norvandt, it is night. Blessed night.
Your mouth falls open in surprise; you have seen the end of a world and the birth of another but nothing fails to stir you more than beauty, freely given.
“Is this…”
“Real?” G’raha guesses. “The trees are, and the grass; the skies mirror the weather of my birthplace.”
Tears form almost before you know it and you understand. This, this is the place where G’raha Tia feels like himself, where he comes when the pressures of leadership and planning and holding destiny in his marbled hand become too much. And he has brought you here.
“Oh…” you’re almost at a loss for words, famed bravado gone in the face of the gift you’ve been given but it doesn’t matter, because your hand grips his tighter and he responds. You’re overjoyed, you find, to see that he feels it, crystal fingers flexing and curling against yours before he takes a step closer.
“Were you born in Ilsabard?”
It’s not what you should be talking about, you think, but the patterns of this sky are familiar to you. He nods.
“How did you know?”
“I’ve been,” you reply, and he almost asks when you managed to sneak into an annexed country with your reputation when he bites his lip, understanding chasing curiosity across his features.
In the time before : before you were bound to notoriety with titles heaped heavy on your shoulders. The Exarch sighs, ears drooping in what you think is sympathy but before he can speak it you untangle your hand from his, resting them with tentative slowness on his shoulders.
“I don’t mind who I am, not really,” you reassure him. You think he does not either. “But I do want, sometimes…”
“Someone to say your name?”
The catch in his voice tells you he knows. He feels it too; and though you are a tease it is why you say it so often to him, the special gift of G’raha Tia and nothing more, nothing less.
“Aye, that.”
G’raha’s crimson gaze shifts from the gentle trees to the sky of his homeland to your face, and you watch him as he takes a deep breath. Takes that step.
“May I?” he asks. Although he prefers to name you his friend the Exarch has said your name before. It’s not what he’s asking now, but in some ways it is. To speak to who you are, not what you have done.
You smile. He takes that as the agreement it is, closing the final distance between you until your arms are pressed against his front, your hands still tracing the crystalline lines on his cheeks.
When he whispers your name, reverently, sweetly, it is with his lips against yours. And later, when it is mixed with his cries and yours, you find the new title so ardently spoken - my love - is one you will wear lightly on your shoulders.