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“If you think you still fight for justice, lad, you’d best wake up. The truth is, you fight for whoever bloody tells you to. Can you not see you’re being used!? By the Scions, the city-states, even the Crystal Braves. They none of ‘em care a whit what you want-only what you can do for them.
And how do I know this? Because I’m the same-a pawn to be used as my masters see fit. All I ever wanted was to liberate my home land, and I ate dirt to make it happen. But what have I achieved after all these years in servitude? Nothing! Not a bloody thing.
If we ourselves are not free-free to think and to act-how are we ever to reclaim our home land? Know this: there is nothing I would not give to take back Ala Mhigo! NOTHING!”
Those words scratched across his brain, the screech of an iron nail on metal plate. It was only thanks to the fact he’d ducked his chin and shut his eyes even shielded behind the thick brim of the Choral Chapeau he wasn’t blinded by the ensuing flash. The last distraction needed for Ilberd and his two companions to escape.
With lungs still stinging from the poison and muscles burning from exertion, Alvaar nocked another arrow to his bow, instead half blind in anger and deaf to anything but the smug challenge in Ilberd’s grin as he made his retreat. No. No there would be no chase this time. There would be no stalking these prints...
This man had threatened his friends. He had betrayed them. He had sold them out and LAUGHED ABOUT IT.
There was a reason he had been known as the “White Wolf” long before he’d clashed with Gaius, with the fabled Black Wolf of Garlemald. And with rage filling his veins, teeth bared in a furious snarl, it was apparently time to remind them, allies and foes alike.
The arrow had barely sunk into the former Marshall’s calf before Alvaar was sprinting after him through the smoke and dust, his bow slipping into a two handed swing that connected and shattered into the Ala Mhigans face in a rain of splinters.
“Alvaar!” Alphinaud cried after him.
He didn’t hear it. Not through the blood thundering in his ears and the fury burning his veins. There was nothing but the resigned expressions on his comrades faces, running from their pursuers in Ul’dah. The fearful look in Tataru’s eyes as the trio tried to make sense of their new position. The defeated slump of a young Elezen’s shoulders with nothing but haunted thoughts.
And all he’d been able to do was stand there feeling helpless. The emptiness in his chest where Midgardsormr had ripped out the blessing of Hydaelyn like a gaping wound. The final insult after a bloody campaign to wrest Eorzea free from Garlean tyranny...
“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” he screamed, voice aching and raw and impossibly foreign to his companions as they jerked at the angry howl.
Dropping his broken bow, he grabbed the cloth at the dazed and fallen man’s throat, slamming him back into the ground and grabbing the nearest stone to bash into Ilberd’s face. He didn’t remember hitting him with that rock again. Or the additional blows that followed without opposition.
“I’M NOT LIKE YOU! I NEVER FORGOT MY LOYALTIES!”
There was so much red. So much of it...
“I NEVER FORGOT THE PEOPLE I WAS FIGHTING TO PROTECT!”
Staining his hands and splattering his clothes.
“Alvaar!”
“I’M MORE THAN A PUPPET ON A STRING!”
If all this bloodshed...
“I’M NOT JUST A BLIND SOLDIER!”
All this hardship...
“I’M NOT LIKE YOU!”
Was not shouldered of his own volition...
“I’M NOT LIKE YOU!”
Faced with his own merit and strength...
“I’M NOT LIKE YOU!”
Then why would he have ever become the Warrior of Light?
-
Lost to his rage he didn’t see his other attackers until an alchemical orb slammed into his chest, burning against his skin even through the Choral Shirt as it shattered in a hiss of white smoke before bouncing away. And half blind, throat aching further from the gas he’d inhaled, he could only see a haze of a silhouette before a spear thrust out at him.
In retrospect, it probably would have killed him if his fellow Scion hadn’t slammed into him and knocked him over. Instead the spearhead sunk hard into his shoulder, twisting the Bard almost sideways from the force before wrenching free and retreating into the mist.
“Forget it! Grab Ilberd and let’s go!”
Coughing wetly, he pushed himself up to follow those voices even with the extra weight dragging at him.
“Alvaar stop it!” Alphinaud yelled, scrambling for a better grip on the furious Elezen and digging his heels into the dirt as the Bard lurched after their fleeing assailants like a man possessed. “Let it go! We’ll deal with them later!”
There. Through the white fog he could see them, a hulking shadow but they’d be moving too slow with their fallen companion. He could catch up. He’d break that fucking spear off in that blasted Elezen’s guts and let him bleed out on his own damned treachery! Let him have his second chances if he could keep his entrails in place!
“Alvaar please! You need to stop!”
He just needed to shake this extra weight off. If his bow arm was responding better then it should have been easy. If it didn’t feel so damnably hot and his shoulder didn’t burn, he could have grabbed his bow and...
There was a faint vibration over his chest, a sequence of pops before that weight was abruptly gone and he overbalanced face first into the dirt. A rush of cold against his chest and back before weight settled on him again with a thud through the static in his brain.
Shifting enough to watch the three traitors scurry around some distant corner, he tried again to get up but couldn’t with his left arm pinned under him and his right arm refusing to answer.
“ALVAR STOP IT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND YOU’RE BLEEDING OUT?!” a panicked voice screamed in his ear, voice cracking on the pitch.
Ah, he knew that voice. It was enough to make him pause, sides heaving and the sound of his own pained coughs starting to reach through the rush of blood in his ears.
“They’re getting away,” he wheezed, or tried to when he only seemed able to speak with hacking wet coughs.
The weight at his back finally moved, scrambling up and making his ribs protest before warm aether was soothing through him, focusing into his chest and soothing a bit of the acid in his throat that still felt raw.
Another flicker of a spell in his senses and his arm stopped being numb, bursting back into feeling with a bright angry pain that sent sparks through his skull.
A shriek of agony tore partway out of his throat before it went silent in an aching wheeze, slamming his forehead into the dirt as he tried to curl in on himself from the pain. Distantly he heard muffled footfalls before another pair of hands were soothing along his back.
He didn’t know how many spells and potions it took to repair the damage but when he could finally think straight he noticed Yugiri was helping to brace Alphinaud up so he wouldn’t collapse on top of him.
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a healer park themselves on someone’s back to heal them, but it was a little unnerving to find he’d needed such measures. He could almost feel Rosa slapping him on the back of the head and admonishing him...
“S-sorry...” he managed out, throat still aching and raw. He’d meant for more words but got little more than a rasp after that.
“You are lucky Alvaar. I think if not for Alphinaud that spear would have found its mark in your chest,” Yugiri murmured softly. “I don’t know that we could have saved you from that.”
—-
Alvaar had lost his voice. It would be temporary, thankfully, but the damage from the poison and subsequent trauma had left him little more than squeaking rasps and a new fear rifling in his heart. How could he have been so stupid? He could have gotten himself killed, or worse yet gotten Alphinaud killed...
He was supposed to be better than this. He was supposed to be past the temperamental rages of his youth. He was supposed to be the Arcanist’s protector, keeping him safe and helping to find their way in the wake of tragedy...
He was supposed to be the Warrior of Light. Not a rage fueled novice that almost impaled himself with his own stupidity.
Fingers brushing along his throat in concern, he fretted silently at how raw and aching it still felt even with healing. The pain flaring whenever he swallowed or tried to speak.
What if he damaged his voice permanently? What good was a Bard that couldn’t sing well enough to inspire their comrades? He wasn’t skilled in the sword or spear... he couldn’t cast white or black magic... His combat skills were as an archer. As a Bard. Raising his voice and channeling the courage and ferocity of victory into his allies...
Shaking his head firmly he shifted his focus. No, there was no time for that. No time for processing when the world kept spinning ever faster ahead of him. There was the matter of that messenger and his mysterious mistress to attend. They needed to hurry back to the Waking Sands. They had stopped briefly at Camp Drybone to handle their wounds and make use of the aetheryte once they were done, there was no time for wallowing in self-pity.
Moving to pull his recovered shirt back on, the Bard paused as he studied the broken closures of the Choral Shirt, fabric ripped and frayed around the main clasp and shoulder straps, scorched from the alchemy bomb in some spots and deeply stained in others. It would take forever to repair... if he even could... what thread had they used? What material and dye? His flight through the forest in search of this armor at the behest of Jehantel, being given this last piece at the end of that long journey when he had finally become something approaching a true Bard... he’d worked so hard to live up to the legacy this outfit symbolized. So hard to wield even a fraction of the inspiring image those storied Bards and Heroes before him possessed...
And here it was, shredded and ruined in his hands and he had only himself to blame. He couldn’t stop Ilberd and the conspiracy that had thrown them down in Ul’dah... and for all his temper he still hadn’t been able to stop him now when he was right in front of him. In his reach...
And all he had to show for it was the exhausted lives he hazarded for nothing, a damaged throat, the shattered remnants of his longbow, the lack of Hydaelyn’s blessing lying raw in his chest, and the ruined shirt of his former legacies he’d tried so hard to exemplify.
Dragging in a breath that hurt for more reasons than a stinging throat and lungs, he stuffed it into his bag and rooted for something else. And if the weight of the chainmail and thick tabard he pulled on instead agitated the still raw chemical burns on his chest... well, that was fair punishment wasn’t it?
-
The knock at the door is faint, delayed almost a full minute after the footsteps that had brought them to it.
“Alvaar?”
The hesitance and fatigue in Alphinaud’s voice pierces like a lance, and Alvaar sheathes the long hunting knife back into his boot before grabbing what’s left of his things and answering it. The Arcanist doesn’t step back from him, but the unconscious lean away isn’t lost on him either.
“The others are ready to set out. Shall we?”
The nod is automatic, as is falling into place in the Arcanist’s small shadow. He keeps his face set in deadpan calm per his usual, but after months of following the stubborn youth across most of the alliance territories, the glances back at him and odd hesitations in his step are obvious. So he stops and waits, watching the Arcanist finally halt several feet ahead of him in the hallway and stand with his back to him, shoulders tense and pose nervous.
The seconds crawl by, Alvaar refusing to budge and Alphinaud not moving for a long time before finally blowing out a breath and looking back at him.
There’s fear. A wariness that Alvaar had grown used to in others, but less so for him. But even then there’s a concern on his expression that’s stronger still and that’s what surprises him most.
“Alvaar?” he asks, hesitating a moment before carrying on. “I’m sorry... I know you cannot answer me in detail right now but, are you alright?”
The question draws him up short. When... in all the innumerable last battles, had anyone stopped to ask him that? Haurchefant had of course but…
He doesn’t know how to reply, and even if he did he doesn’t have the words to. So instead he manages a weak smile and nods, even as he knows it won’t be reassuring. The doubtful look he’s given is unsurprising, and he almost tries for words but stops himself. Setting a hand to his chest he holds it still for a moment before bringing his hands together and gesturing outwards, mouthing two words with it and frowning with a touch of frustration at the puzzled look he gets in answer. Pondering it a moment he takes two steps to close the distance before dropping to his knees, planting his hands on the stone floor, and lowering his head.
-
All at once Alphinaud notices how quiet it is. Alvaar groveling in apology to voice what he couldn’t speak.
The silence is deafening and uncomfortable. Suddenly alien to him even when he still remembers the Bard’s calm silence following in his wake. Cutting a path through Primals and Garleans at his command, a Holy Warrior at his beck and call...
It had never bothered him before, the fact Alvaar rarely spoke but did as he was told. In fact, he remembers finding it troublesome the few times he had spoken up following the Castrum... how quickly he’d dismissed the Bard’s words. Written them off as needless...
It’s strange how much he wishes he could speak now. To break that deafening silence. To show that in some small way things were different then what Ilberd had said. That maybe he had changed just a little from the foolish boy he’d been the last year.
The look Alvaar gives him is miserable when he sits up, carefully rising to his feet with a wince and stepping back from him deliberately and reassuming a muted expression.
Blinking up at the Bard as it clicks, his eyes widen but he says nothing for a long moment. Alvaar was worried he was afraid of him, apologizing for his behavior in Halatali. For the terrifying rage he’d shown and what it had almost wrought. He wants to say it’s fine, that he’s not afraid of him... but he is. Just a little. They had all been, watching the Bard chase down and floor Ilberd with a feral desperation. Savaging him with a ferocity he hadn’t ever seen in Alvaar before.
That... that hadn’t been Alvaar. That hadn’t been the patient and silent sentinel he’d known the last year.
Which really begged the question of if he knew Alvaar at all...
‘A pawn to be used...’
Those remembered words make him sick in embarrassment and shame. And after everything they’d been through the last few hours, the last month, for Alvaar to be the one standing there mute and still apologizing...? How? Why? When he couldn’t find a way to say anything of the guilt crushing like a vice around his own heart?
Breathing a slow sigh, he meets the Bards gaze pointedly. “There is naught to apologize for my friend. I... while I may not understand, for now I don’t need to. It can be discussed later if you wish, when you are well again.” He hesitates visibly before stepping closer and resting a hand to the Bard’s arm, both of them able to feel the few spitting sparks of aether as the Arcanist tried to reach briefly for another spell. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t do a better job of healing you, Alvaar,” Alphinaud murmurs, an increasingly more familiar flicker of doubt creeping through his thoughts with the dizziness of mana deprivation.
Alvaar’s hand closes over his warmly, palm calloused and rough against his skin. He almost tries to pull away on reflex before stopping himself, meeting the Elezen’s gaze as Alvaar shakes his head before tilting his head in question.
“Me?” he asks, watching Alvaar nod. “I’m fine. Tired but, we will have time to rest once this is over. I’ll be well for the meantime. But what of you? You did not answer me earlier. If you need to rest then… then I can inform them that we must reschedule. I would have us go together or not at all.”
The Bard stared at him for a stunned moment before a rasped breath left him in an amused huff. Rolling his free hand at him flippantly in a ‘really?’ gesture that made the Arcanist frown at the teasing.
“Yes really,” he grumbled.
The continued staring had just started at the fringes of irritation before Alvaar slipped an arm around his shoulders and tugged him into a loose one-armed hug against his side. Alphinaud blinked in puzzlement, too caught off guard by the move to protest before Alvaar squeezed him gently and held tight for a long moment.
It was… still embarrassing. He still hoped people wouldn’t see him and make jokes at his expense but… It reminded him of the Binding Coils of Bahamut. Beaten and battered as Alisaie, Alvaar, and himself had been and the Bard had paused to hug them both in a similar fashion as they’d left the ruins. He’d been annoyed then but this time it almost felt like… like things would be fine. Surely, whatever had come over Alvaar in Halatali would need to be discussed but at his core the Bard was still the same. That would be enough.
Letting him go, the older Elezen thumped knuckles to his own chest, unable to help a faint wince as he aggravated his burns but offering a weak grin regardless.
“You’re well enough and we should be on our way?” Alphinaud asked, already knowing Alvaar would nod and managing his own faint smile. “Then I am relieved to hear it. Shall we?”
They set out together and the fact Alvaar was stepping at his side instead of behind him was not lost on the Arcanist. It was a bit different, not quite something he was yet used to, but he sort of hoped it would stay. While the Warrior of Light’s steady presence at his back had been commonplace before there was something far more companionable walking side by side as they were now even if the silence was almost the same. Something that at least suggested Ilberd’s heated words hadn’t all been truth…
“... If things change Alvaar,” Alphinaud murmurs, glancing up at him briefly. “When you can speak freely again, I mean... if you need to talk then I am here to listen.”
There’s a long pause before Alvaar gives a curt nod, offering the faintest smile at him before they step out into the foyer where the rest of their companions await.
It’s not much, not a miracle by any stretch, but it’s a small token of progress. And for now, maybe that can be enough of a start.