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There are some sights in the world one can never tire of. For Alliene Cagieu, The majesty of the morning sun climbing past the horizon of the dravanian hinterlands might in the earliest hours of the morning might well be one of them. Taken at its face value, she finds it a brilliant sight; a sight that no other region of the world has managed to match. She finds it all the richer for the company she’s privileged to share it with. Sneaking a glance to her side, Alliene takes a moment to consider the other duskwight that walks beside her. Though she could only describe their earliest meetings as… tumultuous, the man had grown to be one of her most steadfast companions, and when her entire world crashed to pieces around her shoulders, her loyalist friend and lifeline. And though they’d had their fair share of disagreements throughout her adventures - starting from the very first moment she laid eyes on him, really - Alliene knew that if there was one person on the star she could always trust to be honest with her, it was Foulques.
It makes it more difficult for her to parse his current body language. At a glance, he walks with all the boldness and swagger she’s come to know him for, but she can’t quite scratch the feeling that in this moment, it was serving as a facade for something different. And while that didn’t have to mean anything, Alliene couldn’t help but let it trouble her, just a little. While their relationship had never been free of its share of trouble and conflict, an unwillingness to air those troubles had never been one of them. For as long as she’s known him, Foulques has worn his feelings on his sleeves, and never been one to keep his words in check.
“Trouble?” she asks, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder as the two of them walk the meandering path of the Thaliak river.
“Nothing I can’t solve with time,” Foulques assures her. It’s so quick she could almost miss it, how for a moment’s moment, he stiffens against her touch. It doesn’t tell her that anything’s wrong, per se. But maybe something’s not as right as it could be.
“Maybe it’s something you could solve faster with help?” she tries.
“Mayhap,” Foulques agrees, and Alliene doesn’t press any further.
They walk in tentative silence for several minutes longer, and Alliene lets the burgeoning light of the rising sun steal her focus, marveling at the way it refracts off the distant falls and paints the surrounding landscape in warm new colours. She lets Foulques bide his time, though she can’t help but steal further glances at him as they make their way further into the hinterlands.
The Thaliak has opened wide when Foulques finally gives voice to his thoughts.
“At first I didn’t care, and then there was no time, and then when there was time I didn’t dare ask, but now I find I’d like to know: What drove you to chase after me, all those months ago?”
The question takes her by surprise, and Alliene has to push back a smile of amusement as she takes in Foulqes’s attempt at feigned nonchalance, turning away to make a show of pondering the question. She has more than one answer to the duskwight’s question, if she stops to think about it. There was one of her earliest visions, thrust upon her by a newly-blossoming echo the very first moment she laid eyes on him, of a young lancer made the scapegoat by his craven compatriots. There was her initial distaste for Ywain, driving her to consider any possible alternative. Then there was also that desperate loneliness that had grown inside her from her very first steps onto the path of the adventurer, steadily nurtured by the initially frigid reception she’d first found beneath Gridania’s leafy boughs.
She ‘hmm’s, holding the note for a long moment before she decides the situation could do with a bit of levity first, then shrugs. “You were cute,” she concludes, turning back to face him, face straight as she can manage it even as the makings of a grin tug at her lips.
Foulques’s ears twitch, and Alliene doesn’t miss the way a hint of a flush dusts his dark cheeks. “Excuse me?”
“You were all ‘true courage this,’ ‘true lancer that’,” she elaborates, waving her hands for effect as she fights to keep the laughter out of her voice. “You were so very adamant about it all. It was cute. I wanted to hug you.”
Foulques crosses his arms, an affronted expression crossing his features. “I had every brave warrior in that guild hall quivering in their boots. There was nothing cute about it. Even Ywain was afraid to cross my lance.”
“Quivering, was it?” Alliene huffs sharply as she raps him lightly on the chest. “I remember doing nothing of the sort.” She’d not been quivering because she was instead in the grips of echo-induced delirium, returning to the present world to the sight of a smouldering elezen holding the tip of his lance beneath her chin. It had been an awakening in more than one sense of the world, but Alliene didn’t think Foulques needed to know *those* particular details. He’d be insufferable about it for a week, no doubt. “And if I recall correctly, I had you at the end of my lance before the moon passed.”
“Perhaps you should use that gift of yours to look into your own past, if you remember it so poorly,” Foulques rebuts. “At the end of your lance you had me, perhaps, but only after you cheated.” He steps into her space, looming in a way that had only grown more effective since he donned the drachen armour of Ishgard. Alliene might once have found it intimidating had she not grown to know the duskwight so well as she did. Now it affects her in an entirely different manner. She spins away from him, wagging a finger in front of her as she fails to contain a peal of laughter.
“A bold accusation from the man who sicced beasts on me during our first encounter,” she teases.
“It was a test,” Foulqes counters, reaching out to grasp her wrist. “I’m sure it pleases you to know you passed it with flying colours.”
Alliene laughs again, batting the other elezen’s hand away and countering: “Then mayhap that little trap of mine was a test also. In which case, you failed - miserably even!”
A spark glimmers in Foulques’s eyes, and Alliene feels her pulse spike as she spies the way Foulques’s body tenses like a coiled spring. She’s diving out of the way even as he pounces, but Foulques has always been the faster of them, and the gulf in speed between them was only made wider when Alberic decided he was fit for a soul crystal. Alliene feels both Foulques’s arms wrap around her torso and can’t help but let out a delighted shriek as Foulques tackle sends them both soaring backwards.
Then she realizes the Thaliak river is running steadily along behind her, and her giggles turn to wet sputtering as Foulques submerges them both beneath the surface of the water.
“Oh gods, it’s cold!”
“We’re in Dravania; were you expecting warmth?”
Alliene glares at him, and Foulques briefly raises his hands in mock surrender, before pushing himself through the water and quickly steering Alliene back to shore.
“You know neither of us have dry clothes, right?”
“My deepest apologies,” Foulques says, tugging her back out of the water. “When next I feel compelled to tackle you into a river, I’ll remember to ensure a dry change of clothes awaits you at the end of it.”
Alliene huffs, tugging off her shirt as Foulques looks away abashed, quickly wringing out the sopping fabric as best she can before slipping it back over her shoulders. She lets out an exasperated sigh as she sees him about-face. “There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before Foulques.” A moment passes, and Alliene stops what she’s doing when she realizes Foulques has yet to reply. Finally, standing rigid and still looking away, the duskwight says: “That is true, but if I looked now it… would not be with the eyes of a platonic friend, and I will not take advantage of you that way.”
For a moment, Alliene fails to make the connection. When she finally does, the ultimate realization settles warmly in her chest. “Oh, Foulques…” she whispers, staring at her truest friends rigid back. “Foulques… Look at me won’t you?” It takes a moment to coax him to turn around, and when he does, Foulques’s eyes are fixed on her own. “You’ve been my truest friend for so long now Foulques,” Alliene assures him. “But it’s never been the eyes of a friend that I wished you to look upon me with.”
Foulques eyes are wide when she crosses the distance between them, pressing her body against his own and pressing a kiss against his lips. “Look upon me as you’d like to,” she whispers when she finally breaks away for air. “I’ve always looked upon you much the same way.”