Work Text:
The night air was so still that even the puff of Estinien's breath as he knelt before the statue felt like an intrusion. Sacrilege, in this one holy site that was left to him. The stone beneath his knees was frigid, biting into the aching joints. Hair like snow fell into his face, hiding his eyes from the heavy stone gaze that was his only witness. A gaze far colder than it had been in life.
"I'm back, my love," his whispered. Time had done nothing to stave off the tightness in his throat whenever he came, but he spoke through it anyway. "I miss you." Silence was his only answer.
He swallowed heavily against the emotion that threatened to choke him. "I think it's almost time," he said, and he didn't fight it when his voice broke. "I've fulfilled my promise, and there's nothing left for me here. I'll finally get to lay down my burdens and join you."
He looked up, and with the wetness that blurred his eyes, the statue looked almost like the man it represented, as he had in his youth, with his angular eyes and tempered curls and quiet strength. He let the tears pool and mar his vision, so that he didn't have to see the weathered features that time had chipped away. Just as it had the man himself.
What a cruel twist of fate that had left him here, doomed to outlast all he loved. Nidhogg's final revenge. He didn't even have the will to be angry about it any longer; sorrow had long since replaced that flame. The pain of watching his lover age while he did not, to see him ravaged by time and know that their chance to grow old together had been torn away from him... He'd been angry once. He'd raged against the world, against Hydaelyn and Halone and any god who would listen. He'd pleaded with them to take him too. But Hydaelyn had not existed in decades, and if the gods still listened, they did not care for their former champion.
And so he had watched black hair become threaded with grey, laugh lines deepen and muscles give way to a fragile softness, and he had rejoiced for the chance to see it even as he damned the Dread Wyrm for the life stolen from him in granting him eternity. They had been granted a blessing greater than they could ever have dreamed to have survived the hardships that had been laid in their path, and yet there was no fairy tale ending in store for them, no chance to grow old together and support one another. The whiteness in his hair would never be from age, and the aches only ever from injuries. Through it all, his beloved stayed by his side, through the discovery and the despair, his love a constant warmth that made life worth living. Even when strangers mistook him for Estinien's father, then his grandfather, his love hid his misery with a smile and corrected their mistake, the clasp of their hands and the brush of lips against skin an open act of defiance. And when time could not be resisted any longer, Estinien had held his beloved in his arms as he drew his last breath, and cursed the oath that forbid him to follow. He'd have broken every covenant that bound him, had it not been his love himself who had demanded his vow.
And so he had weathered time as the years passed, and all he had known and loved withered and died before him, until even their memories were as faded and distorted as the statue before him. And finally, after more years than he could count, his duty was completed, and he might at last lay down and rest alongside the one who had awaited him for so long.
The blade was heavy in his hand, nearly foreign after so many years. Its edge glinted in the firelight, a blue that evoked crystal eyes and shining silk robes. A fitting farewell. It took no courage to lift it, to turn it on himself until the edge kissed his skin; the courageous thing had been to wait until the right moment. To live for the one he would die for. But all that was over now.
"I love you," he breathed. The words echoed in the stillness.
He sank the blade home.
…
Nothing.
He felt nothing. No pain, no rush of warmth down his skin, no gentle embrace as he was welcomed into his lover’s arms. Nothing but the cold bite of the stone beneath his aching knees, and silence like a blanket to greet him.
His breath left him in a broken sob, hands clutching at the relic that would not unite him with his lost love as he curled in on himself and screamed. All these years. All these years of suffering, with only the hope that death would bring peace to drive him onwards, and for what? Ishgard had stolen that from him too.
Again and again he took up the blade, but it would not so much as scratch his skin. In the end, as dawn broke to reveal a crystal sky with not a hint of white to mar its glory, Estinien still knelt before the statue of Saint Aymeric, his heart still inexorably beating its steady, hateful rhythm. As it would until oblivion swallowed the world, and took the broken shell of the last Azure Dragoon with it.
His hand clenched around the hilt of the blade, old leather creaking with his grip. Fine. If fate would not grant him this mercy, then he would seek out oblivion in whatever way it demanded. He would lose himself in the cold embrace of darkness and destroy the world he had once helped save. There was nothing he would not do in the name of his love, no line he would not cross and no suffering he would not endure. And if the gods were watching, let them oppose him; even Hydaelyn's hero had succumbed to the burden of time, and none remained to resist the fall of the heavens.
After all, Estinien had nothing but time.