Chapter Text
G’raha Tia was not someone she had spent a great deal of time thinking about.
She remembered him, aye, remembered his tale and his face and his deeds, but she could say the same of so many allies, enemies, and acquaintances who had drifted in and out of her life these past few years. Mide was an Au Ra who became stuck in a time loop and possibly became her own ancestor. Rhoswen was a pirate captain who castrated men or something. J’bhen was a kindhearted stained glass artist trying to make a relationship work with a moneylender. G’raha Tia had fallen into roughly the same category as any of them: a companion for a time, and then seldom contemplated again.
When she forced her mind to recall now who he had been back then, she remembered an excitable young man, a tia only a year or so younger than herself, as eager to embark on heroics beyond his skill level as he was to share every last ounce of knowledge he had ever accumulated about anything. Overcompensating, she supposed, for the strength and battle prowess he lacked and so obviously envied in her.
But who had she been back then? Standoffish. Quietly floundering while she permitted everyone else to paint her a hero, because it was as good an identity to adopt as any. A loner using a false name, reluctant to divulge too many personal details about herself, to permit anyone to become too close. And still endlessly put off by tias.
Still, they were friendly enough. They had camped together for a fortnight or so, after all, shared meals and traded tales around the campfire along with Cid, Biggs, Wedge, and Rammbroes. She would call herself better friends with Cid than she had ever been with G’raha, but even despite the lingering misandry of her youth, even despite her desire to escape her past and the tribal ways she had so vehemently left behind, she could not help but feel some sort of kinship with one of her own kind.
She certainly had no idea he had gone on to think about her a great deal.
A great deal.
The night sky had been returned to the First at last, and Z’seira Xarynh—known then to the masses as Nyx Nevermore, Warrior of Darkness—had managed to escape the revelry for a quiet moment alone upon the balcony overlooking the Dossal Gate plaza. Yet who did she find herself preoccupied with but G’raha Tia—the Crystal Exarch, G’raha Tia—teaching Thancred’s adoptive daughter Ryne the steps to some Crystarium folk dance that Lyna and several people were engaging in all around them. His crimson hair, snowy silver at the tips, was bright as a beacon from her vantage point above, his short braid flapping about behind him with nary a care despite that he had only permitted anyone to see his face but an hour ago. Something about that made her feel—
Made her feel—
She didn’t know. Angry? Perturbed? Happy for him? Relieved that everything was over, questions were answered, secrets were out in the open?
No. More than anything she was still confused, and frustrated that she still had so much left unanswered while everyone else (rightfully!) celebrated a conclusion.
She could still see his face in the Echo, a private moment she hadn’t been meant to observe in which he had divulged nearly everything to Urianger; His voice, his expression, both filled with so much tenderness when he spoke of her, nearly unmistakable in its significance… Urianger had caught it too, she thought, added to the list of secrets he had kept. Feo Ul had caught it, and urged her to see it too. The evidence was mounting, the witnesses gathering, the defendant one very guilty truth:
The Crystal Exarch, G’raha Tia, had feelings for her, which had motivated him in his insane scheme to some degree.
Far more startling than that, she was interested.
But that was crazy, right? For one thing, he was G’raha Tia, awkward nerd extraordinaire. Z’seira wasn’t particularly interested in the minutiae of Allagan history, a subject she seemed to recall him quite eager to go on about at length , nor was she academic enough to engage him intelligently in a conversation about...city governance, or summoning people across the rift, or whatever else in the seven hells he preoccupied himself with that wasn’t arranging the felling of lightwardens. Sure he had a playful, agreeable way about him, and always seemed delighted to have a conversation with her despite that her expertise began and ended at hurling various sharp objects at wildlife and supernatural beings until they died, and she had been privately admiring his quiet dedication to someone, but—
“Nyx!”
Ryne had spotted her and was joyously waving her down from the balcony. Z’seira experienced a brief moment of panic that she had been caught staring, despite that the spectacle of her friends dancing in the plaza was surely something to justifiably stare at without questionably pining over any of them. Lyna and G’raha also smiled joyously up at her, and Z’seira’s bare fingers twitched when she waved back.
“Come dance with us!” Ryne beckoned.
And so the Warrior of Darkness, hero of the hour, extracted herself from her thoughts to rejoin the festivities.
She had only left for as long as it took her to change out of her heavy armor and into more casual attire, but in that time the crowd gathered in the plaza had nearly doubled. Minstrels were here now, playing the music that many revelers danced and hollared to, and it seemed the Wandering Stairs and the Facet of Nourishing had brought enough booze and refreshment to make this impromptu celebration a real party. Above, stars glittered in the night sky, the moon shone brilliantly upon the Crystarium, and the air was crisp and cool.
By contrast, her friends were rather sweaty and uncool, though they appeared not at all deterred by either state of being. Ryne was doing her best to mimic the folk steps that Lyna and G’raha displayed for her, the Exarch offering encouraging words and Ryne beaming with pride as she received them.
When Z’seira drew close enough for conversation, Ryne excitedly filled her in. “They are teaching me the—” She frowned and looked to the Exarch, only slightly missing a beat. “What was it called again?”
“The Laxan Lily,” G’raha supplied directly to Z’seira, favoring her with a warm smile and dancing his way ever so slightly to the left to make room for her to join them. “So called for the way the partners move about each other, which was thought to resemble the petals of a lily. ‘Laxan’ is the Elven word for Lakeland, you see, and—”
“You told me that one already,” she ribbed playfully.
“I— Oh.”
She had only meant to tease affectionately, a show of friendship if anything—a throwback to when he had talked her ear off about all things Allagan at the St. Coinach campfire. He used to take such things with good nature, she recalled, but the Exarch deflated ever so slightly and slowed his previously coordinated dancing to the sad sway of a middle-aged man trying to stay hip alongside his kits, having fallen out of synch with the actual steps. Z’seira swiftly kicked herself for it. Scrambling to recover, she grasped for the original premise of her invitation to join them and awkwardly began to mirror the moves he had been performing before she had so charmingly shoved her entire foot into her mouth.
“So you—er…”
“Ah—like this.” He smiled with both patience and relief and performed the choreography in half time for her benefit until they were both comfortable enough with it to catch up with the music again. “Step, step, elbow—there you are! Now we link arms here—”
As they did so, Lyna and Ryne partnered for the same step, which amounted to twirling about each other and then going back the other way, followed by something that involved them pressing palm to palm while moving their feet in alternating directions. Z’seira was fairly coordinated, something that came part and parcel with having divine gifts of physical prowess, but given all of the…baggage of the situation, it was all she could do to maintain her finesse while some godsdamned child in the back of her mind shouted that they were pressing their hands together, and she was dancing with the Exarch in the middle of the Crystarium, and that something about this felt forbidden but she couldn’t place if that was because he was the Crystal Exarch—esoteric, untouchable, unknowable—or because he was G’raha Tia.
She kept her eyes focused on him in an attempt to drown out those distractions, but then she was forced to reckon with the fact that he was looking at her, and that this might have been the closest she had ever seen his face despite that they were still a respectable distance apart.
He looked tired. Tired, but happy. His bangs were disheveled, his robes still damp, and there was a deep exhaustion in his eyes, but it lay behind a glimmering excitement, perhaps owing to the adrenaline of the battle and then the celebration or perhaps owing to her.
The second reason why it was crazy for her to even consider having a thing for G’raha Tia was how much he looked up to her. It scared her. It scared her because she was afraid of letting him down if he came to know the real her, it scared her because of the power imbalance she held over him and the responsibility that placed upon her, it scared her because of the power imbalance he held over her with all the things he knew which she did not. There were two hundred and four reasons why they shouldn’t be together in any romantic sense, and a rhyme that sang in her ears louder than any of them:
From shadowed hood he watched you go, his ruby eyes with warmth aglow. See yourself as he saw you, and that shall be the clearest clue.
She was certainly seeing it right now in real time, ruby eyes glowing warmly and all, and it terrified her to gaze into that crimson abyss and see how plainly his admiration of her was writ there. More than anything, it scared her because Feo Ul was right about Z’seira finding the answer to her own turmoil therein.
“You catch on quickly,” G’raha praised, and her stupid heart did a spineshatter dive in the brief and awful second before she realized he meant the dance steps and not sussing out his feelings. “Though I should expect no less from the slayer of primals and lightwardens.”
Z’seira eased a measure and smirked. “This is nothing. Step, step, elbow— you haven’t even asked me to do a backflip out of a pool of lightning yet.”
“Hmm.” The corners of his lips curled upward as he removed his hand from hers and they repeated the steps from the beginning. “The Laxan Lily calls for no such thing, though I dare say none would be upset should their champion decide to put on a show.”
Was...was he flirting? He might have been flirting. Or he might have been blowing smoke up her arse because she was the Warrior of Darkness and he was still hoping she wouldn’t be terribly upset with him for kidnapping her and her five closest friends and neglecting to tell her that, actually, absorbing all of the Lightwardens’ aether would hurt quite a lot but it was okay because he would just kill himself to make things right again. Their champion tilted her chin upward and eyed the Exarch appraisingly. She decided to hedge her bets. “You bring the puddles of death and I’ll bring the questionably timed acrobatics. It’s a deal.”
“Me?” Thin crimson eyebrows nearly disappeared into his damp silver-tipped bangs. “I am hardly so eager to endanger you after saving our world, nor to ruin the masonry of the wonderful artisans of the Mean.” He gestured sweepingly to the flagstones beneath their feet as though such were part of the dance, and Z’seira nearly mimicked it until she caught on. G’raha graciously said nothing, though she caught the flicker of amusement in his eyes.
“Well if you’d rather I bring the death and you do the back flipping—”
He gave a nervous and slightly breathless laugh. “Pray do not allow this face to deceive you, my friend. I am still an old man.”
Z’seira pointedly directed a glance at his feet and then back to his face, eyebrow raised sharply with skepticism. “Looks to me like the old man’s still got some moves?”
A fierceness glittered in G’raha’s eyes at the challenge. Despite himself and his station and the audience, he took up the opportunity to do some showing off, adding some wavy hand movements and fancy footwork to the traditional Lakeland dance he had been trying to teach her so faithfully. It wasn’t good dancing by any means, but he was certainly moving, and a bark of laughter escaped Z’seira before she could contain herself. But what the hells. She joined him in the ridiculous, bad dancing until he was winded and exhausted, forced to stop and catch his breath through his laughter.
“I yield, I yield!” he exclaimed, patting the air with his hands and swaying slightly. “I… oh.”
Panting lightly herself and having stopped dancing when he did, it took Z’seira a moment to register that the music had changed markedly. The minstrels were now strumming a slow ballad, and when Z’seira looked up at them, she saw they were looking directly her way with conspicuously self-satisfied smiles.
No, they were looking at the Exarch. They were looking at her and the Exarch—that is, the Warrior of Darkness and the Exarch—dancing goofily and having fun together, and now they were playing a slow dance and grinning like hobgoblins.
The conspiracy didn’t seem to elude the Exarch, either, who was turning his head from the minstrels back to her with wide eyes by the time she looked back at him. His ears fluttered nervously, and his face was flushed, probably from the dancing. Probably.
Well. Nothing for it, then.
Z’seira smiled slyly and offered her hand. “I know this one…do you?”
Relief swept over the Exarch’s face. He took her right hand in his left, and placed his own crystallized right hand on her waist. He swallowed, and his voice was surprisingly fragile when he spoke. “Indeed.”
If she thought she had been unusually up close and personal with him while they were dancing before, it suddenly seemed like nothing compared to this. He smelled of seawater, and there was a bit of kelp caught in the fur of his right ear, and she could make out the exact delineation where crystal overtook flesh on his left cheek. Despite that he called himself an old man (and he was, she knew) his ti’lanh markings, two petite points gesturing delicately toward his upturned nose beneath his strange and soft eyes, had never darkened before it happened, never grown, a sign of physical maturity in miqo’te males.
The third reason why it was crazy for her to feel something for G’raha Tia was that he was a tia. Tribal customs strictly forbidding such relationships aside, Z’seira had left her tribe and the whole Seeker of the Sun lifestyle behind precisely because she wanted nothing to do with its men and the very structured expectations of breeding that their tribes revolved around. A tribeswoman could choose not to breed if she desired, yes, because a tribe generally had plenty of willing mothers to go around, and an ever-present need for huntresses and guardswomen. That hadn’t stopped Z’dho Nunh from feeling entitled to her, or balking at her rejection of him, nor did it inspire any of the tribal elders to speak in defense of her rights against the Nunh. And tia—tia were seldom better than nunhs; tia were crazy, always so desperate to prove themselves, with the worst of them outright dangerous in the lengths they might go to in pursuit of the Nunh’s position. How in the name of any of the Twelve did she travel to a different freaking shard and still manage to catch feelings for a godsdamned Sunseeker man?
G’raha Tia appeared to have thoughts of his own running through his mind at a frantic pace, some of them perhaps the same as hers but most of them likely very different. His lips parted to speak, but there was a hesitation between his heart and his mouth. “When I left all those years ago,” he confessed after a moment of private deliberation, “I never thought to see you again.” A quick, self-conscious smile flashed over his notedly plush lips. “For all the pain, I am glad that fate has so remarkably given us a second chance to know one another.”
A second chance to know one another indeed. Despite that he seemed to have nothing but the fondest memories of her from their NOAH days, Z’seira wasn’t sure it was entirely fair to claim she had ever given him a first chance to know her. Nor had she truly bothered to know him. But here was this person willing to lay down his life for others—sacrifice everything—an actual hero, admiring her, whereas...she? She was a fraud. A mercenary who came upon convenient happenstance and found a good living felling the beasts that no one else could, or would. It wasn’t heroic; it was hazard pay, and it came with a good reputation.
But seeing what effect that reputation had on others years later, well…
It made her want to get to know a real hero.
“But what will we do with it, I wonder…?”
G’raha blinked. “Hm?”
Z’seira smiled and shook her head, aware of her own crypticness. “Something Feo Ul said to me. They gave me some advice when I really needed it, and...their words have been on my mind a lot lately. Don’t tell them I said so—” she knew full well that overgrown flea was likely spying on them right now “—but that pixie is much wiser than they let on. I think.”
“You think?”
“Circumstances have yet to play out.”
“I see.”
Do you?
Z’seira chewed anxiously on her lip. Indeed, Feo Ul had pointed her toward the clues, but the clues had been there all along, had they not? She studied him as much as she dared at this distance, his crystal hand heavy and cold on her waist; his flesh hand warm and clammy in hers. He looked back at her with a question in his eyes and she wondered how many questions were writ in hers. Behind them, she revisited so many seemingly inconsequential moments in her mind that seemed so different in hindsight: his cryptic words at Holminster, awkward pauses when he visited her room late at night to check on her wellbeing, the mystery person that he had revealed he cared about so deeply that protecting them had been at the heart of his motivations all along…
“It was me, wasn’t it?” she breathed despite that she was hardly sure if she had intended to. But now that the words were out there, she had an obligation to clarify them for the bewildered man who blinked back at her, his lips parted on the precipice of voicing his own confusion. “The person you spoke of—in Kholusia…”
G’raha’s eyes widened, and he quickly stiffened and looked away from her. “ Ah…”
Oh gods, had she said something entirely wrong? Her heart froze still until she watched him cycle through the entirety of terror, chagrin, and ultimately wry acceptance as he quickly revisited the event and words in question.
“...yes,” he admitted, almost sheepishly. “’Twas you.”
Thus freed from her own terror, Z’seira quickly shook her head to dispel the notion that he had anything to be embarrassed about or afraid of, fearing herself that if he lacked courage in this then she would never get the answers she sought. “Then speak to me as you wanted that day, with no thought of concealment. Lay your heart bare. What was it you wanted to say to me?”
The crystals in his cheek and in his neck caught the moonlight as they turned slowly together with the music, his bright red eyes studying and considering her with a thousand truths locked behind them that she so desperately wished to know. It appeared for a moment that he might yield and say something of consequence—and perhaps he wanted to—but ultimately he offered naught more than an apologetic smile.
“That...may be rather a lot to say all at once, I fear. But…” Though he faltered, he also gathered strength. His shoulder half shrugged, his brows lifted hopefully, and the smile on his lips was cautious and sincere. “Mayhaps...now that we have more time...we might spend more of that time together?”
Z’seira took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the night air and releasing it with a steadier head. Of course it wasn’t the time nor the place to go through absolutely all of his feelings right here and right now. Twelve, what did she know about these things? She adjusted her grip on his hand and nodded, matching his smile with a relieved one of her own. “I’d like that.”
The Exarch’s smile brightened. “Excellent, then.”
“Excellent—good. G—excellent. Right.”
On that articulate note, the song ended and they were socially obligated to either part or confess their undying love to one another. They anticlimactically opted for the former, releasing one another (albeit reluctantly, she thought), and then spent another handful of seconds lingering awkwardly for want of a smooth exit. Her heart was pounding and her limbs felt numb. Gods, this wasn’t her; this was pathetic.
“I...ought to check in with the Facet of Nourishing,” the Exarch declared at some length. “See if they should require anything of me.”
“Right, of course, yes,” Z’seira validated using what was absolutely a normal number of affirmations. “I’d hate to keep the Exarch from his exarching.”
There was a small, cryptic smile on his lips. “And I shan’t monopolize the Warrior of Darkness.”
He hesitated for a moment as though he wanted to say something else, but ultimately the Exarch gave a small bow and took his leave.
Well, that…
That went well...right?