Chapter Text
“Katias! Are you quite all right?”
It always took him a moment to grasp his bearings when the Echo decided to insert itself into his head, imparting memories and sensory details upon him as though he himself had lived through them. This time, though, it felt—different, somehow. As though he couldn’t quite breathe properly. He wondered what it was that had made the air so heavy.
A voice had spoken to him, he reminded himself. Kat tried to look up at them, noting that at some point during that accursed vision he had involuntarily dropped to his knees. His hands were clutching at something—someone, he realized—in an instinctive attempt to steady himself. As he raised his eyes, his gaze met that of Ser Aymeric de Borel, Lord Commander of Ishgard, and he nearly recoiled from the shock.
And then more came back to him. Of course it was Ser Aymeric—they had just been speaking of the Archbishop in the Lord Commander’s office, after all, discussing any potential means of tracking Ishgard’s wayward leader down, debating tactics that could be utilized to quell the Ishgardian citizenry’s growing unrest before anyone else got hurt. Serious topics though they were, the conversation had been rather casual—Kat had thought to bring him a gift of freshly-brewed tea, the hour running late as it was, particularly as it seemed none of them would have much of a chance for rest in the coming days. So their conversation had been more a means of making sense of things than any proper strategy meeting—and as such, they had been blessedly alone in the Lord Commander’s office, just this once. How embarrassing it would have been for anyone else to have witnessed such an episode.
Ah, but he had been asked a question.
“I’m fine,” Kat choked out, though he thought the words sounded strange in his own ears. He should really pick himself up, he thought. Pry himself away from Ser Aymeric, whose hands rested on his shoulders in a type of embrace that suggested he had rather panicked when his guest had mysteriously collapsed.
“You’re shaking,” Aymeric said, crystalline eyes full of misplaced concern.
Was he? Funny, that.
“What did you see that startled you so?” the Lord Commander asked, every word full of worry. “Some new truth we were unaware of?”
Kat dropped his gaze to the floor, stifling a bitter laugh. Such a thing almost would have been preferable, at least in the fact that the information gleaned would have been useful. But no, this latest Echo vision had been the farthest thing from helpful, and Kat could not tell Aymeric what he had seen—not now, perhaps not ever.
There was nothing to be gained from shared memories of lashings and torment, familiar though it may have been to be put under the whip with one’s father dutifully watching on.
“Nothing of consequence,” Kat assured him, forcing a smile to his face as he met his gaze once again. “Just caught me by surprise, is all.”