Work Text:
Garlemald’s cold is a bitter thing; it takes only seconds for the air to bite at Ciardha’s cheeks and needle its way to the fur lining of her coat. Any as foolish as she to wander more than a few yalms from flame or heater would equally find themselves with the wind snapping at their steps and the ice peeling away their skin until they bare no matter how many layers they carry. Camp Broken Glass was so named for the crunch of ice beneath soldiers’ feet but so too did it suit the flakes that the wind wields against her as shards to bleed what little warmth remains in her veins.
A stack of crates is barely a refuge; wood made brittle by the constant pelt of snow, stacked beneath awnings that do little save spare the need to dust them. Ciardha tucks herself into a corner where the wind grows trapped and chases circles around her heels. A dim glow spills out from the buildings in the early morning hours, no better able to penetrate the dark than the fires can keep back the chill. Within their walls dwell many a heater; the cerulean devices humming against the stone, tempering the worst of the cold. It is where Ciardha ought to be, but indoors means people, and she can’t bear to be seen.
Besides… she is used to the cold.
It is the lie she tells herself when the wind sweeps up and strikes her across the face; carves into injuries she doesn’t remember getting and seeps into the space between her mind and body, rattling loose what should be impregnable. The cold is painful, but it is real. Real in ways the past handful of hours couldn’t hope to be, real in ways the nightmares will be when she surrenders to the night and the exhaustion that lingers dangerously against her mind.
She checks her hands for the third time in the past hour. They’re still hers. She expects them not to be.
As long as it remains cold she knows that she is here; as long as the ice sets into her bones and rattles through their cracks, she can feel every inch of them.
Every inch of herself. As if hours ago she hadn’t been wearing the skin of another. As if Zenos hadn’t ripped her from her own flesh and left her to stumble through a ruined city in a half broken garlean body, all while he hunted her friends beneath the Warrior of Light’s pelt. The memories anchor the cold, each as real and tangible against her as a stake driven into the frozen earth.
She tries not to think of whose body she walked in. It collapsed the moment she left it and never rose to reclaim the person it had been before. Had it been someone before Zenos had decided on his sick game? Or had he plucked one of the many corpses that littered the ground around his twisted castle? Ciardha isn’t certain which she fears more; both thoughts make her ill.
The nameless soldier still ghosts across her skin, the phantom of a dress worn too long that lingers after shedding it. Every fibre of it had pulled and stretched as she demanded more than it could ever hope to offer; every step, every heartbeat etched into her mind. Ciardha thought she had known what it felt like to be powerless.
She hadn’t the faintest clue how bitter its draught truly was.
Still she pushed. Pushed and pushed and pushed until her limits were shattered on the ground, her head spun from exertion that shouldn’t faze her, and steps she shouldn’t have to think about buckled her legs beneath her. She can still hear the grating sound of metal armour as she dragged herself across the ground, ilm by painful ilm, towards Camp Broken Glass. Every part of her was beaten and broken but she could not- could not stop-
Her friends trusted her, they cared for her. They wouldn’t think twice to let down their guard and welcome her back and Zenos would- They’d be bleeding and dying and the last thing they would see was her face wearing his-
Ciardha’s frame recoils inwards, curling tighter around herself. It does her no good. She cannot shake the images from her mind; cannot close her eyes without seeing her reflection twisted by Zenos smirk and his bloodlust shining in her eye. Her body hangs uncomfortably from her, sullied and twisted and Ciardha knows not how to wash the stains from her own skin. She’s scrubbed at it for hours but it won’t come off. She rubs her arms again but feels no better.
Ciardha shakes, but it isn’t from the cold.
“There you are.”
The dead air makes a shout of Estinien’s voice and it's enough to make her jump. Her eye is wide and startled and it is both her first and last mistake. She can see it in the worry that flickers behind the set of his expression. He has probably come out here to scold her, now he stumbles over what to say. That isn’t what she wants. Hasn’t she already caused everyone enough trouble?
“What are you doing out here?” Estinien settles on his original question, but he closes the distance with more urgency than his steps normally carry. “No one could remember seeing you recently. Alphinaud had himself worked up and Alisae was nigh on ready to broach the tower herself before I told them I’d find you and sent them to bed. What’s going on? You’ll freeze to death at this rate.”
The pause is long enough for the last of the distance between them to vanish. Ciardha wants to answer but she has forgotten her own voice. It feels weak and rasp and empty of the assurances she should be offering. They won’t fool Estinien, he knows her too well for that; but normally she would offer them anyways, and sometimes he would pretend to believe her. Neither have the heart for such a dance this night.
Her lack of answer is enough to put his hand on her shoulder. The metal of his gauntlet is heavy with cold and grounding all the same. She knows it will be enough for him to feel her shaking beneath her coat; his tightening grip confirms it. He pulls her towards him, enough that she stumbles a step, enough to jolt her from the grip of her thoughts and force her to look up at him.
Estinien’s face is tight with frustration, the set of his features a thin veil for the anger that stirs beneath. Ciardha recognizes that expression from the shadows of Ghimlyt, when Elidibus had nearly taken her life and Estinien could not leave her side to go tear him apart. It is not directed at her, but it rolls off him all the same. The barely restrained tension that has no direction to follow, the desire to act with no clear path to take.
“Come on. This is no place for you to be resting.” Estinien’s voice is calmer than his grip suggests he’s feeling. He tugs on her shoulder, but her feet refuse to budge. She knows he is right, knows she needs to gather herself for the battle on the morrow, but she is frozen to this place still trying to settle back into her own skin. Estinien lets his hand slide down her arm, finding a better hold on her wrist. “Come. At the very least we should get you something to eat.”
Food. Plates of roasted meat and the scent of wine, red as blood and just as bitter. A long table too empty of occupants but still malms too close to the one across from her. The outline of Zenos eating away turns her stomach though she’s not eaten a bite. The way she sees it is wrong- the way she feels is wrong- this isn’t right- this isn’t her- it isn’t-
Her grip tightens; it isn’t a fork in her hand but someone’s fingers. She steps forward and no table stops her. Shadows return where they belong on her blind side. She is still cold but it is the wind rather than the dread. The fear is constant.
Estinien won’t ask what the matter is; he already knows, and he isn’t one to entertain pointless questions. She is grateful for it, shorn of words and still lost between thoughts. The edges of his gauntlets dig into the curves of her palm; she’s holding him too tightly but she doesn’t dare let go. If she does she’ll be back there again, she’ll be trapped and alone and powerless to stop Zenos from painting everyone’s lives across the snows of Garlemald.
“Ciardha.” Estinien’s voice is quiet, but it is more solid than anything in her head. It's a beacon through the tumult of it all that she can follow. It’s a trail that starts with the hand he places at her back and ends with the way his breath breaks against the crown of her head. Somewhere in the past few seconds she’s become tangled in his arms. Instinct would draw her out of it, but he holds her there when she tries to move. She is slimy with the dregs of Zenos’ power; Estinien shouldn’t be holding her like this. How could he bear it when she couldn’t even bear to be in her own skin? She pushes against his chest; he pulls her in closer.
“You’re afraid.” It’s a question as much as a statement.
“Not an hour ago… this body tried to kill you.” Her voice barely rises over the wind.
“That body, perhaps, but not you.”
“Is there so much difference? How can you feel safe, seeing me and not being certain if I am friend or foe? Not knowing if I will raise my hand or my blade?”
“Do you think us so simple?” Estinien’s question fills the space around them and for a moment the howl of the wind is drowned out by his words. “Do you think for a moment we fooled by his charade? Had G’raha said nothing I’d have done so myself. I should think by now I know you a bit better than that.”
She knows he is right. She should have known the same, back then. Yet somehow logic could not get its grip about the icy sheen of panic that had overtaken her. It cannot find its hold any better now, even with Estinien trying to keep it in place for her.
“I… I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what I could do.” Ciardha’s head falls forward, connects with a dull thunk that echoes across Estinien’s armour. The cold of it sears her skin in turn and the pain of it cements her in the moment. Reminds her she is still here. “All I knew was that you were all in danger, that any trust you had for me was whetting the blade at your throats and-”
“You are not responsible for that madman’s actions,” Estinien speaks firmly; she can feel the anger simmering in his undertones. “He took your body from you, and he used it to attempt the unconscionable. You’re the one who has suffered in this, not us.”
“It wasn’t I that I feared for so.”
“It never is, with you, even when it ought to be.” Estinien’s grip cements on her shoulders, pulls her back enough that he can look her in the eye. “‘Tis no easy thing, to watch the strength you have honed being turned on those for whom you honed it. I’ll not pretend to know your feelings, but I do know what it is like to watch on helplessly when your own body, your own power, is turned on your friends.”
It was not so long ago, not in reality, Ciardha knew, yet it felt so. She too remembered painfully well the moments in which Nidhogg had taken Estinien’s lance as his own and set it upon Ishgard. When she had been on the ground before him, his weapon prepared to run her through. She had seen him fight it with every scrap of his will, seen him painstakingly reclaim a single hand. She had watched Estinien resolved to end his own life, if that is what it took to save them.
Would she have done the same? Had Fandaniel’s experiment not ended when it had, would she have been able to bring a garlean blade down on her own body and surrender everything she had in order to save those she held dearest? Long would she have said yes, without hesitation. Looking Estinien plainly in the eye it was far more difficult to find that resolve. When had that changed? When had she begun to find value, to love and cherish her time so much she feared its surrender?
“I remember still, what you told me back then,” Estinien insisted with a shake of his head. “You need remember it too, this time for yourself.”
“That was not your doing.” Ciardha protests. Her vision blurs. She tries to blink it away but it returns each time. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Nor was this yours, and I seem to recall someone being quite stubborn on the subject. You should at least allow yourself the same courtesy you give to others.”
“But it is my fault!” Her rejection is violent enough to make stars swim in what little she can see. It is only Estinien’s firm hold that keeps her upright, that steadies her feet and keeps her from curling on herself again. “Not his actions, perhaps… but he went after you because of me. He would have slaughtered every last one of you for no reason save to anger me and I-!”
She would have. Had Zenos succeeded Ciardha knew well she’d have lost herself to the fury Zenos wanted of her. The hatred would stoke her until the only thing that could sate her was his body strewn across the snows. She’d have given him exactly what he wanted. She still would, should such a horror ever come to pass, and that frightens her more than anything. Because Zenos knows it too.
“He was right, in that. He knows how to strike at me. He’ll do it again.”
“Then let him come.” Estinien’s voice is a barely contained hiss. “It is a mistake he was lucky to survive once, he’ll not a second time.”
A second time .
Every ilm of Ciardha’s frame seizes at that. There would be a second try... wouldn’t there? Not in the same way, perhaps, for they were guarded to it now, but Zenos would find another. And another, and another. He’d persist again and again until she faltered at just the wrong moment. If dying did not cure of him of his obsession then how could she possibly hope to escape it? He courts her with death and makes it walk in the shadows of any who dare stand with her. As long as she remains with them, they will ever be-
“Stop. I know what you’re thinking.”
“You’ll all remain in danger if you stay with me.”
“I hate to be the one to break it to you, but that’s hardly anything new.” Estinien’s voice scolds in equal measures as it attempts to assure. “How often do we walk into danger together? Scarcely goes by a day we do not. I’ll not pretend to know the minds of the others, but I can’t imagine there is anyone here who does not know what they risk and choose this path in spite of it.”
“It’s not-” Her voice falters and eyes close. It all replays in the span of a second. Every step and every sound and every body she left in her wake to carve a trail back here. Those who hindered her, those who helped her; all dead in the snow.
It isn’t the same. Zenos’ hatred is not for something so broad as a country or principle. He is not Fandaniel who scorns the world itself and paints wide strokes of abhorrence across every being he can fathom. Zenos’ hostility is razor honed and focused and personal and that makes the consequences that come of it hers to bear. All those that have suffered his attacks, all those who died in his twisted little game… all of them made to play because she the piece upon the board he desired. They would still be alive, if not for her.
And if that were true then what of her friends? What of when it became G’raha or the twins or Estinien? Would she one day be their undoing? Lead Zenos or some other danger to their doorstep and- No she- she can’t. Not them.
“It is because you care for me, because I care for you all he’ll-!” She shakes her head. “Perhaps if I move separately, to distract him then you all could-”
“Enough!”
Estinien’s voice rises and Ciardha’s growing panic collides against it, crashing and spilling every which way. She finally looks up enough to find his ice blue gaze fixed upon her, his brows crease in frustration.
“Stop trying to carry everything by yourself. Do you think you the only one with enemies chasing you? Do you think if Zenos gets his battle, that Fandaniel will then declare the world fit to exist? We fight more than a single threat, more than a single danger and none of them are your doing. We all know this. Not one person is here because they were strung up and dragged along.” Estinien’s patience frays at the edges, even as he still holds her with a remarkable gentleness. They’ve argued about it before: her tendency to take on every burden she perceives, to carry them silently until she prepared to crack beneath their weight. She is in pieces but she’d take more all the same.
“We’re here because we choose to be.” Estinien leans in until she cannot not look away from him even if she so chooses. Until she can feel his breath against her face, the first hint of warmth since Fandaniel had taken her. “I’m here, because I promised you I would remain at your side, as you have mine and I’ll be damned if I let Zenos be the reason I break that oath.”
“I…” The words still catch, Zenos’ face imposed over her own is the hook. Estinien looks at her and he doesn’t see it; she can tell by how fond he looks even through his frustration. She doesn’t know how he looks past it so easily; she wishes she did. Instead each time she glimpses her reflection she is back in the tower, back on the snowfields with Zenos raising her own blade and-
“All of us have chosen this path, all of us have committed ourselves wholly to this cause and if you think that this is enough to frighten us all away, then you’ve sorely misjudged your companions. We are not so fickle as that, and I think you well know it. So stop listening to your fears and start listening to your friends.”
“I’m-” She stalls on the inhale, breath stagnant in her lungs.”I’m sorry. I’m sorry I just-”
“It’s alright.” Estinien lets out a soft sigh, runs his fingers through her hair. “You needn’t hide it, either. As you’ve told me: if it’s too much, let me help you bear some of the weight.”
Her voice comes, barely a whisper. “I’m afraid, Estinien.”
Estinien pulls her against him once more. “I know.”
And he doesn’t let her go.
Estinien means every word he has spoken. Ciardha can feel it in the quiet way he lets her cry against him. For how long, she knows not; he grants her all of it in spite of the howling wind around them and the bitterness of the cold. He calls himself ill suited to comfort, but Ciardha cannot fathom a foundation more unwavering than his frame, a reassurance more real than the arm around her waist and hand against her head. The fear is sharp and strong and has hooked itself deeply, but she is not alone in bearing it.
“I’m- I’m afraid of losing you.” Ciardha manages as she tries to find her voice again. “Of losing everyone. And because of that… I am afraid of losing myself. He took something I did not think anyone could steal and now I am terrified it will fall from my hands.” She presses into Estinien’s chest. His armour is not built for proximity but it folds beneath her need to be close to something real. “I’m afraid that next time I won’t be fast enough, or strong enough or-” She hitches on the thought. “I’m afraid a time may come one day to prove that you would have been better off never having met me.”
“If we hadn’t known you, most of us would be dead. Have you already forgotten who pried Nidhogg’s eyes from my armour? Or if you prefer more recent events, tell me, who was it that stopped the blade Zenos turned on Alisae?”
She cannot deny it, no matter how little she felt her contribution was in the scheme of all they had suffered. Her friends’ strength played the greater part by far. Even so, it remains true that it was her hand that had stayed the attack on Alisae- or in this case, a Garlean hand had-. Ciardha tries to swallow the bile at the reminder. She had not ability to use aether, little strength and less life left in a dying body. She’d forced more of it regardless. Thrown it at Zenos with what little she could muster.
How easily might they have turned on her in that moment? To their eyes she was nothing but an enemy attacking the image of their comrade. They could have struck her down before she could mutter a word of protest, and what defense could she offer? She’d have been one more garlean body in a nameless grave.
Yet…not one of them had.
Not one even raised a weapon at her.
The realization dawned with a muffled sob. Why had she not realized it until this moment?
“You knew it was me.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying, isn't’ it?” Estinien sighs and shakes his head. “I could never mistake you. No one else I know is that reckless. You threw yourself, quite literally I might add, at an enemy most would cower before. You risked your life as though it were nothing in order to protect us from attack. I”ll not pretend I had figured out the particulars, but I know your brand of foolishness when I see it.”
Estinien twines his grip between her fingers. “There is naught that will fall from your hands save that which you choose to let go.”
He speaks with such certainty, but Ciardha feels her doubts all the same. It isn’t so simple to move forward, to forget all the night has wrought, no matter how he urges. She still doesn’t feel like herself, even now her own skin sits poorly on her shoulders. Notions she has never thought twice about curdle in her gut. The fear will not shake loose so easily as that, but steadily is it losing ground to Estinien’s unwavering conviction.
“Well… it will not be your hands that fall from them, not so long as I control my own.” Ciardha swallows, holding him back and trying to will away the trepidation that skirts those words. “But… what if… it happens again?”
Estinien shifts and Ciardha is falling backwards, her weight braces against something solid and her feet are whisked from the ground. She is in his arms with a wide eye and thoughts startled enough that they break from their loop. The wind still circles them but tucked here she is beyond its predatory bite. Her breath catches.
“Then we figure out the answer,” Estinien says easily. “Together.”
“What are you-?”
“There is no reason not to talk closer to a fire. If you catch your death out here tonight, I’ll catch mine on the morrow at Alisae’s hand, so do me this favour and spare me her ire.” It is no favour to him, they both know it. Just as he knows that making her feel as though she indulging him is the best way to court her surrender.
“Was she really that worried?”
“We all were. She’s simply the only one prone to express it in violence.”
The sound that comes from Ciardha’s lips falls somewhere between laughter and another sob. She lets herself curl into his grasp, just this once, without protest. Tucked against him the evening feels more distant and she lets the proximity flood her senses. “That is a lie and you well know it.” She can feel the chuckle deep in Estinien’s chest.
“You’re right. Tis hardly the moment I would take up pacifism.” Estinien is bolstered by the way some of the weight eases from her voice. It's spoken like a promise, and knowing him it is one. They are to breach the tower on the morrow and Estinien’s lance will be a thing to fear.
Ciardha’s mind has not the energy left to follow that thought to its conclusion. The following day is a scant handful of hours away yet it feels so impossibly distant and intangible. Exhaustion robs her of its urgency, of much else beyond the vague perception that Estinien has brought her somewhere indoors.
There are scant few rooms in Camp Broken Glass and too many to fill them, yet it had been unanimous that one of the private quarters ought go to her. There is little more than space for a bed and a small table, but it is one of the few with a true hearth instead of a whirring heater. Estinien sets her down against the furs and tosses some logs on the dimming embers until they snap and roar up into a proper blaze. The heat and glow begin to swell, slowly washing over her.
It isn’t until she encounters heat again that Ciardha becomes aware how bereft of it she had become. It is slowly being dragged from her, rattling her frame along the way. Any attempts at speaking are foiled by the tremors that rock her and even curling up on herself does little to stay them.
She ought to keep her coat, except it is covered in snow and dirt and reminders that make her want to pitch it in the fire. Her grip pulls at tears in the sleeve that were not there this afternoon, the furs about the bottom are frayed and loose; she hadn’t done that either. The blood stains on fringes make her stomach turn. Who else had ‘she’ killed?
“What are you doing?” Estinien comes over when her trembling hands can barely manage the buttons. “You’re freezing, you need to keep your layers.”
“I can’t. He ruined it. I haven’t- I need to fix it-” she stammers out. Ciardha doesn’t think it is possible. Maybe she could find a spare. She would apologize to Tataru later; no washing would get Zenos’ filth from the fibres. “I’ll use the blanket- I can’t stay in it.”
Estinien lets out a sigh but helps her from it all the same. The fabric Ciardha is wearing beneath is a poor shield against the Garlean night, but it is better than the memories against her skin. The fur blankets make a better substitute, and she lets Estinien drape one over her shoulders. She pulls it tightly about her and tries to let the worst of the shivering find its way out from her core.
“Better?” Estinien queries when the worst of her shaking has eased. Ciardha nods once, slowly, but feeling more in control of her movement than she has all evening. “Then you should rest. I”ll-”
‘Estinien.” Ciardha cuts his words short; she can see the surprise on his face when she does.
“What is it?”
“Can I… be selfish?”
That pulls at the corners of his lips. “I daresay you haven’t the faintest idea how, but I should like to see an attempt.”
“Please don’t leave yet. Would you stay with me a bit longer?”
That grants him a moment’s pause. It is hardly unusual to spend time together, and many a night had they whittled away in each other’s company, but Ciardha is not ignorant of how the others might look upon it for him to linger in her chambers at so late an hour. It was an entirely selfish request, one that would cause him no end of trouble. The guilt settles in before the words have fully left her mouth.
“It’s alright.” She shakes her head. “I’m certain you’re weary as well. You need your rest for the morrow. I’ll be fine.”
She hears the bed creak beneath his weight before she hears any answer, and her slight frame tips against him as he sinks down next to her. Despite the growing fire, his armour feels as ice through the furs and she winces at the contact before she can check her reaction. She tries to shift herself enough to find a comfortable position, but he stands near immediately.
For a moment Ciardha fears he will leave, wonders if it the better option as she tries to hold the pieces of herself fast within the confines of the blanket. Instead the rhythmic chime of metal fills the quiet between them and his armour collects in the corner of her room. When Estinien moves back towards her, he is down to a single layer, simple black fabrics that he wore between skin and metal and ill suited to keep him from freezing on their own.
“You’ll be cold.” Ciardha points out.
“Then I hope you intend to share.”
Estinein pulls the blanket back from her shoulders, and she surrenders it easily. For his presence she would relinquish a hundred hundred blankets and she would not see him surrender his comfort along with whatever other plans he may have held this night. The night air rushes against her in the wake of its absence and for a second she can feel Estinien’s frustration that she didn’t even try to fight for it.
Ciardha hasn’t the time to shiver before Estinien has taken the blanket’s place. His arms wrap about her sides, his head rests at her shoulder and the blanket he has taken now drapes over them both. She is in his lap and wrapped in his hold and tucked into the safest corner this world could offer her. She can feel it in the tension that still ripples through him, the protectiveness that makes the muscles in his arm as taut as they were when he upon the battlefield. His sigh breaks against her cheek.
“You surrender your own comfort too easily,” he mutters against her, his eyes drifting closed.
“Perhaps I anticipated your plans. I do trust you, you know.” Ciardha leans back into him and Estinien’s grip tightens ever so slightly. Between the fire and his presence she is finally beginning to warm, to feel as though her soul firmly anchored in the moment and not wont to be spirited away.
“Even so.” It was not the first time and Ciardha expected he knew it would not be the last. Be it so simple a moment as a blanket on a cold night, or the telling turn of a battle where lives were upon the line, the needs of others come first. Those she serves take precedence in all things. She had been raised to offer, to give, and Ciardha cannot so easily change a lifetime of habit even with those she loves. “You need to look after yourself,” he chides.
“I look after-”
“Better than you are now.”
That she cannot deny. “Aye….”
Estinien is not the sort to speak of matters of the heart, but many are the other ways Ciardha has learned to hear what is unspoken. He tells her of his worry in how his posture tightens rather than eases around her, he speaks of his fondness in the manner his grip pulls her against his chest and his face half buries in the damp mess of her hair laced with snowmelt. The silent exchange fills her heart and shakes loose the frost of uncertainty that lingers upon it. Ciardha’s hand cups the side of his head and she lets her fingers trace absently through his hair in the same silent reply.
How grateful she is. For him, for his sturdiness when her world wavering, for the way he wraps around her and holds together her pieces when she doesn’t dare show the world she is cracked and shattered and imperfect. They want of her a hero, he asks for nothing but herself.
“The whole thing, it frightened me,” Estinien admits to the quiet crackle of the fire. Ciardha feels his head lean against the side of her face, his breath break softly against her cheek. The firelight dances a reflection in his eyes. “For a moment, when your body appeared without you… I feared you had been lost. That whatever it was wearing your flesh had consumed you entirely.”
“You were afraid?”
“You sound surprised. Is it so difficult to believe?”
“With how you face the enemy on the battlefield? Perhaps a little.” His chuckle echoes against her back; Estinien pulls the blanket tighter around them both. “I guess that makes for both of us, then.”
“I told you that you weren’t alone, didn’t I?”
“That you did… that you did.”
Easier is it to believe here than out in the snow. Here where the world is small and contained and little more than the crackle of the fire and Estinien’s embrace. She cannot hide here forever, this she knows. The world still demands much, and she cannot suffer Zenos and Fandaniel to continue their atrocities. The surest way to put an end to it all, is at the top of that tower on the morrow.
“You can rest, you know,” Estinien chides gently after her fourth heavy nod.
“I’ll likely keep you awake.”
The nightmares are unavoidable, rare is the night they do not visit her in some form, but the rawness of the fear has them lingering close to the surface. Ciardha knows the moment her eyes close it will all come back, the panic, the fear- if she didn’t wake half the camp screaming she’d be much surprised.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Estinien shakes his head. “I’ll wake you when you need it.”
“What would I do without you?”
Uncertainty still prickles against her skin; its discomfort is fading but much of it still weighs against her. Ciardha isn’t sure if she will ever settle back into the person she was before, but perhaps… that need not be something terrible. If she is still herself, if she is still someone who can be held and cherished so dearly by another, then she can find the strength to take another step forward, even if she is still in piece. For his sake, for all their sakes- for the people who would know her even lost outside of her own skin… she would face anything. Even the blood and the bitter cold of Garlemald and all that hid in its shadows.
“You’ll never need find out, if I have my way about it.”
“Then I pray that you do.” Ciardha answers softly, pressing her lips to his cheek before curling deeper into his arms. The night weighed heavily over her, but its burden no longer stole the breath from her lungs or the light from her heart.
“I rather like it… not being alone.”