Chapter Text
In truth, it was hard to believe this still was the Void.
If Remeraux looked out from where she stood, one could almost imagine how things must have been before a whole world had been consumed by all-devouring darkness, battered and broken though it was. Like a picture drawn on old parchment, and left to molder with time. The courtyard with its crumbling statuary, flanked by large halls of broken stone, all under a sky that retained its brightness despite no sun to shine through the dull violet clouds.
Hells. Through a funhouse mirror perhaps, it almost reminded her of her first home, Ishgard.
The stonework and the rubble at least were near enough to rhyme.
Zero had said that a Voidsent’s domain was a reflection of the mind of its owner…. As Remeraux watched the clouds drift by, she couldn’t help but wonder what part of her was reflected in this, Zero’s own.
“Do you truly have nothing better to do than loiter outside my chambers?”
Zero’s voice in that low, dry tone catches Remeraux’s attention and separates her from her idle thoughts. Violet eyes darted through the doorway she had very much been unceremoniously loitering outside of (guilty as charged), to find the mysterious woman sat cross-legged in the center of her room. It was nigh barren, almost to the point of being downright depressing. What furniture that was there was scant; a bed, a table, some dusty shelves and a hearth that forgot the notion of fire so long ago as to be irrelevant; all scattered to opposite corners of the room, leaving nothing in the middle save for the dingy sea-blue rug that Zero herself sat upon, right in the center of an otherwise crumbling floor. Her black-feathered hat was set just to the side of her, leaving her unkempt short locks of stormcloud gray free to flutter slightly in the sickly wind that blew straight into her room– as Zero owned no door. Piercing eyes the same hue as her hair opened to fix the Elezen with a steely look that carried just a touch of annoyance.
“Aye… suppose I don’t.” Remeraux’s Brumefolk brogue trickled out as chuckled amicably, albeit with her own share of sheepishness. “Would ya believe it’s hard to sleep here?”
“Couldn’t tell you. I haven’t the need for it, nor does anyone else here.” Zero let out a little, quiet huff through her nose, as she closed her eyes once more. “If you’re looking for bed or board, you’re ages too late to find it here.”
“More’s the pity I missed the rush,” Remeraux shrugs, slipping into banter as easy as breathing.
“Is that why you’re here interrupting my meditation?” Zero cracks one eye open, narrowed though it was. “To complain about your accommodations?”
“Nah. Nothin’ so trivial.” The Elezen smiles, warm and easy, and something about it seems to slightly irritate the woman before her. “Mind if I come in?”
“I suppose whether I do or not matters little,” Zero sighs, her posture going slack as she seems to abandon hope of the quietude she sought. “As I said. You’re free to traverse my domain as you wish. And I know enough from fighting you that it’s not likely I could dissuade you if I tried.”
“Er, sorry about that.” There was that sheepish chuckle again, a hand instinctively going to scratch at the back of Remeraux’ s neck, ruffling locks of her shaggy raven hair. “Can’ say that I knew the whole picture when we first came ta blows. It was kind of a busy time fer me.”
“Not like I had any say in the matter myself.” The voidsent woman looks away, off to some arbitrary point on the wall. “Although I do owe you some thanks, for cutting down the man who held my leash, and forced me to bark like a common hound.” She lets out a sigh, frustrated and weary. “Such ignominy I hope to never know again.”
“I can only imagine.” Remeraux offered up another little laugh as she took a seat next to Zero, her armored duster and its various pouches ruffling and clattering as she settled. “Truth be told, there’s no love lost ‘tween me and old Zenos. He was a right bastard, an’ I’m glad to have fed him to the crows.”
“...Odd. He seemed to hold you in high esteem.” Zero tilted her head, quizzically. There was something about her eyes that made it feel like she was seeing straight through to the core of you. A gaze haunting and captivating in equal measure. “You are his ‘friend,’ are you not?”
“I’m afraid that friendship was… a touch one-sided.” Remeraux shrugs, rolling her eyes. “I’d much sooner be friends with a lass like you.”
Remeraux winks, and Zero immediately makes her regret that she had. Her eyes narrow.
“And what, exactly, do you mean by that?”
“N-nothin’ sinister, mind….” Remeraux swallowed, freckled cheeks dusted pink with embarrassment. Damn her fool tongue. It was like she was born without the ability to talk to women without eating her own foot in the process.
“...I mean it.” Zero continues on, heedless of Remeraux’s. “You still haven’t answered my question, you know.”
It had been the second thing Zero had asked, just after Hydaelyn’s last gift to Remeraux had returned her to her old self; back from that ghastly form Zenos had trapped her in for however many moons since the big bastard had shown back up to darken her doorstep, with that scythe of his in tow.
Are you his friend? And… What is a friend?
“...Oh. Sorry. Busy day, you know. Ain’ every day ya get spirited to the void. Lemme think….” Remeraux taps the tip of her pointed chin in thought. “...It’s folk who like havin’ each other around. Who enjoy each other’s company. An’ who do things fer each other, not fer a reward… but ‘cause they wanna.” She exhaled through her nose. “I think Farfarello an’ Ciriatto were friends, in a way.”
“And they were the weakest among us for a reason.” Zero almost scoffs. “If it’s as you say, then I’ve no need for friends.”
Her eyes land on Remeraux’s once again, and it makes her heart skip a beat. “They run counter to the rule of this world. And as a survivor… I’ve no desire to give away anything for less than its fair price.”
Remeraux can’t help but chuckle at that. “Aye, I figured that would be your response.” She grins, looks away for just a moment, and then returns her gaze again. “That’s why I’ve come willin’ ta barter.”
“...Really.” Zero’s gaze went even more scrutinous. “Well, you know what I want from you. The only currency that matters here.”
“I do. An’ believe me,” Remeraux thumps her broad chest with a fist. “I’ve got more than enough aether to spare.”
“That you do….”
Was that a glimmer of hunger in Zero’s gaze, as she looked at her now? Out of all the looks she had given Remeraux, perhaps that had been the most thrilling of all.
Her dark leather garb, her sonorous voice, those haunting gray eyes… almost despite herself, Remeraux found she could hardly look away from her whenever she was around. She'd been stealing enough glances enough to earn a sly elbow from Estinien over it.
“Tempting." Zero murmurs. "But you haven’t named your price yet.”
“It’s a simple one, don’ worry.” Remeraux tried to stop her heart from racing, to banish the blush on her cheeks. “I jus’... wanna know you more.”
“Haven’t I answered enough questions already?”
“Perhaps. We’ve learned a lot about what you do, where ya live, what it was like before… this.” Remeraux gestures noncommittally to just about everything. “But… I gotta admit, I’m curious about you.”
“Whatever for?”
“I dunno. There’s jus’...” There’s just what, Remeraux? Llymlaen help her around women, she’s almost begging. “There’s jus’ somethin’ about you.” She chuckles, this time to cut the tension more than anything else. “Maybe it’s yer eyes.”
So like the other gray-eyed beauty from the void that had also stolen her heart.
“Not one for subtlety, are you?”
“Ne’er been my strongest suit.” Remeraux shrugs her broad shoulders, leaning in a bit closer. Okay, so we’ve committed to flirting then. It was either that or spiral into anxious introspection about what in the hell she was doing here in the first place, trying to put words together in front of a woman that had up to this point in their short working relationship successfully tied her stomach in knots and not much else. “What can I say? You’re… captivatin’, Zero.”
“I’ve been told similar sweet nothings before.” Zero seems bemused, a shadow of a smirk playing at the corners of her pale lips. “There’s plenty of succubi here, you know. Usually you hear such things before being made their supper. Is that the game you’re playing?”
“Hey now; you’re still the one gettin’ the aether in this situation, make no mistake.” Remeraux laughs, a warm sound like tarnished bells. “I promise ya that; an’ where I’m from, yer word is as good as yer life.”
The most barren little chuckle escapes Zero’s thin lips. “A fool and her aether are easily parted….”
“I’ve been told sim’lar things before,” Remeraux teases in her echo, with a violet wink. “So how ‘bout this. How ‘bout you drink yer fill… an’ then you tell me how much I’ve earned for it.”
“Tempting." Zero repeats, drawing closer perhaps despite herself. "Very tempting….”
There was a conflict Remeraux could tease out, playing behind Zero’s eyes as her brows furrowed in thought; of what, she could only assume. Perhaps between shrewd and cautious calculation and a much baser hunger. Like a moth who knows enough about the flame to know they should fear it by rights. “...Although one must ask why you offer so much so freely.”
“Call it a show of good faith.” Remeraux smiles, offering her hand, already willing a gentle glow of aether trickling up to her palm, down the old familiar channels drilled into her mind by her Maestro of the Red. It took on a similar hue, bubbling up in glittering vermilion as it coated her hand. “Consider it the start of our friendship.”
“Didn’t I already tell you that’s something I don’t need?” Zero narrows her eyes yet again.
“You did. But maybe I can tempt ya otherwise.” Remeraux winks, extending that glowing hand to shake. “My aether fer your company; nothin’ more, nothin’ less. Do we have an’ accord, Zero?”
“...If you’re deadset on making such a foolish bargain, who am I to argue?”
She relents, and as Zero takes her hand, her own digits settling around Remeraux’s much larger ones, it feels like one wall falls out of a mighty fortress. A fortress not unlike that of her domain itself.
It wasn't much. But, it was a start.
“We have a bargain, Remeraux Melret. I hope you don’t come to regret it.”
“Between you and me?” Remeraux gives her a roguish smirk, as a trickle of her vitality begins to leave through her fingertips. “I like my odds.”