Chapter Text
The door closed behind him with a soft, gently percussive thump, leaving Guydelot Thildonnet standing illuminated by the aureate light of the lamp above Sanson Smyth’s doorstep. An agitated hand carded through his hair, further disturbing the already artfully tousled locks. Something buzzed and crawled beneath the elezen’s skin, and oh, it is such a familiar feeling after all. Would that he could have escaped it all those previous times he had tried to leave it well behind, this maddening and seemingly insatiable restlessness…
Tipping back his head to regard the waxing moon for a moment, Guydelot could not help the way his mind strayed directly to Menphina with a silent, pleading beseechment for mercy— No. No, surely this must be everso close to perverse, at best! To see the battered, exhausted Serpent Captain home to his bed to recover from his ordeal at the hands of Nourval, to know him as so wounded and fragile as he closed his eyes… And yet still to feel so— so!—
Long strides carry the disquieted Bard through the lengthening evening. Away from the uncertainty, the insecurity, the unconscionably terrifying longing. Fleeing, as he always has—although this time at a brisk, yet restrained pace, if only to conceal his disquiet from eyes that might see him and speculate.
Speculation… Did he want others to speculate on why he was leaving the Captain’s home? To wonder about Guydelot the Spent and Sanson the Stiff? Did he want—
No!
Frustration creeps along the edges of the elezen’s thoughts as his feet take him onward through the darkness, discordance among an already confused din between his tapered—and maddeningly flushed—ears.
How could stiff, unyielding Sanson Smyth worm so deeply into him? Guydelot marvels irritably, hardly paying heed to the fact that his steps had swiftly marched him to his own room—and his arms were now collecting and strapping his larger performance harp to his person. Though the weight and awkward position of the instrument makes him growl under his breath, it deters him not from hauling it back out into the moon-dappled darkness while his thoughts continue to churn—smouldering with an obfuscating haze of frustration to suppress the myriad emotions beneath it.
Fueled by that nagging annoyance, the source of their banter and perhaps the very foundation of their relationship, Guydelot is almost surprised when he finds himself suddenly emerging into a meadow nestled between the trees. Not that the location was unfamiliar to him; far from it. No, the surprise lay with how time had seemed to contract and carry him here with a swiftness that left him in doubt whether he was even awake at all.
Alas, the weight of the instrument on his back and the protestation of exercise-warmed muscles convinces him his travel had merely been expedited by long habit, and being quite lost to his thoughts. A state he truly ought to be more disturbed to find himself in with increasing frequency since their journey to find the Ballad of Oblivion. Since a well-worn, yet studiously-kept journal with such familiar handwriting had found its way into his hands. Since reading a certain Captain’s intimate thoughts writ plain upon the page, with Guydelot’s own name sprinkled throughout—plucked off the parchment by sharp blue eyes as surely as those eight letters in Sanson’s handwriting had plucked a quivering string in Guydelot’s chest.
A bowstring? A harp string? Both?
Drawing an intentional breath draws the Bard’s eyes and attention back to the meadow. To the stump upon which he had oft perched to practice his songs until they stirred the heart as surely as those words upon the pages of Sanson's journal had stirred his own. Here, in a known, reassuringly secluded space where his fingers and his strings could bend skill to emotion…
Yet as he strides across the grass, caressed by argent moonlight, to sit and to pull the instrument against his chest and shoulder—Guydelot’s fingers have begun to tremble. Uncertainty rudely seeks to falter hands that are usually so confident as to be able to perform while actively dodging aether, blades and arrows. And though he feels the frustration and a tickle of fear rising to prevent him from touching the harp’s strings, warning him to stray away even from music lest the change it provoke inside him, the truth it reveal prove irrevocable—Guydelot is and ever will be a Bard at his truest. Though anxiety and insecurity mingle, the tips of those long, trembling fingers reach for his harp strings, turning yet again to music to untangle a complexity that has never seen fit to grace his heart before…
Tentative notes are gently strummed.
Muted with the touch of the heel of his opposite hand, limiting the vibration of the strings—restraining himself as he begins. Hesitant, searching for the strength to let the music loose. Ah, Gods… Guydelot could never hide within his music, could he? And this—drenched in silver moonlight, the quivering shadows cast by the harp's elegant frame would never do justice to, let alone hope to reach the emotion buried within.
Both hands, then, and muted no longer—the instrument’s true voice singing everso delicately in lieu of Guydelot’s own, choked as it is in a constricted throat. Slowly finding a melody that lived in those recesses deep within, seeping its way tentatively through the minuscule cracks in the Bards bawdy façade. A melody that flutters slightly, like the strange feeling in his breast when first beholding a certain uptight lancer. Feeling deep blue eyes upon him, the strings and chords tumbling downward resolutely, an irony in Guydelot’s faint smile as lashes grow heavier and feather his cheeks.
Who could have known to warn him, then? How could he have guessed that his initial aesthetic appreciation would blossom and leave him this stricken, this yearning creature oft pitied in song? How unbecoming of a Bard, of his reputation itself, and yet… The descending notes are the path of a quiet sigh, resigned in acceptance that no matter how stiff and irritatingly rule-bound the hyur first appeared, Guydelot’s rebellious heart had found a foothold there and would not allow him to turn away. Not now, not after… everything.
A finality strikes on a lower string, plucked and left to ring a while as agile hands climb upward once more—finding the melody with more surety, yet no less delicacy. For his emotions are delicate, for certain. There is a gentleness in this melody, warmth in the cool moonlight, acknowledging the emotion that has simmered and thawed that which Guydelot thought impenetrable.
A low string, an upward rolling chord—both hands plucking blocked chords to tell of his uncertainty, his impotent frustration with himself colouring the edges of the notes.
Why Smyth? Why the man who spurned the Bard like clockwork?
A low string, an upward rolling chord, both hands plucking stronger still—a slow and gradual crescendo to echo the path of his thoughts, the growing furrow between his brows.
Why must it be the hyur who staunchly rebuffed every try for flirtation that Guydelot volleyed, who seemed to take Guydelot solely at his reputation and naught else? And why, oh why did it begin to sting so, as he came to accept the object of his fixation would ever remain only a comrade at best?
The Bard’s body sways, rocks slightly in time with the ponderous tempo, pulled into a melodious reverie of his own design. Pressing against the harp’s body to feel the vibrations inside of himself—shaking open those fissures in his chest wider still, to relieve the pressure, the pain. Ah, the pain! How betrayed he’d felt as they’d fought, barked at one another like animals, threatening to break what was tenuous to begin with, and for what? Pride?
Foolish. How foolish! He’d begun to swallow it down, to bury it, but now? The pressure threatens to burst him at the seams, eating away at him from within. Swept up into the crescendo of his song, the strength of lithe fingers plucking his own heart as much as his instrument and then—
A rolling chord, and a breath of silence… Succumbing to the inevitability of it all.
Another rolling chord… His hanging head beginning to lift, leaning back to feel the harp’s grounding weight against his long, slender body.
Yet another rolling chord… Slower now, inhaling through parted lips. Feeling the quickened rhythm of his heart, the piercing regret he’d known for antagonizing Sanson so.
A final, rolling chord… Slower still, exhaling, settling into that sensation. It was foreign, that feeling of remorse. The disquieting reality of acknowledging the disconnection and loss from something held so necessary—yet only realizing it once it was gone. For the first time since meeting the insufferable lancer, he had been—adrift. Confused. Unsteady.
Reaching instead for the steadiness that lives within his technical skill, notes are set to roam up and down the strings without cease, wandering as he himself had wandered when they'd parted. Restless, unable to settle, yet following a melody that seems to be traveling somewhere definite.
Fingers flow across the strings as his eyes had flowed back then across the pages of Sanson’s journal. Illicit, wrong, oh—he should not have been peering into the hyur’s thoughts like that, should not have been prying into that heart—
Strings ring with a slight crescendo of sound, tempo quickening, softening, quickening again with a flutter of fingertips. Remembering how his own heart had tripped and stumbled to witness his name written there, that first time…
The music recovers as his heart had done. The words had been none too complimentary at first, and the Bard feels his lips pull into a wan smile, the cascade of notes falling from his fingertips echoing the decision to continue reading. And then, the startlement to see the words slowly changing, acknowledging Guydelot’s skill—speaking of a respect, of a desire to work together more closely, to understand one another, of an unshakeable belief in Guydelot, in him—
A deep inhale leans the Bard backward slightly, briefly tipping his face up to the moon as fingers tumble back down the strings, hover about his realization in the lower register—lingering there for a time. Tracing memories of the Ballad of Oblivion, of playing his own heartstrings in lieu of his bowstrings. Notes slowly climbing, growing and dimming with the pace of his breath, turning more timid and perhaps even awed as they approach the upper register once more. Tempo shifting, wavering with the slight rocking of the Bard’s body as it, too, flows inexorably forward…
Falling still, space breathed open in silence within the melody, leaving notes to ring and fade into the night. Knowing Sanson’s weight as the harp leaned against him—slicing bindings at the hyur’s wrists, eyes stinging to behold the bruises, the blood. To see the chest that still rose and fell, the weak but utterly honest smile he was blessed with. The relief in that deep gaze as Sanson fell limp in his arms. Safe. Trusting.
Knowing a quiet fear, then, shaken to his core. Wondering that he should even be worthy of such an expression, of such trust, after all he had done. After being only Guydelot, only himself. Whoever it was he had now become…
Liquid silver slides from glittering lashes, painting lines of moonlight down the Bard’s cheeks in the still evening despite the quivering pull of his lips in a miniscule smile. Recalling the hyur’s peaceful expression from naught but bells ago, tucked warm in his bed. Safe. Trusting.
Again, Guydelot’s fingers have begun to tremble, yet… To the strings they unerringly go. Rolling tenderly across the instrument to gently ease his sincere affection free from its confines. At last safe in himself to unburden it here, gifted in echoing notes to the night’s receptive silence.
A lullaby, perhaps, for a sleeping Captain who cannot hear him. Exhausted and leaning heavily against the instrument, head hanging, temple brushing the wood’s grain and catching hairs like gentle fingertips he wishes he could feel…
Would he be rejected? His fingers wonder as they caress the strings, asking the instrument, asking the evening, asking the moonlight. Would he even be believed, to utter these feelings to words?
Did it matter, as he, himself, knew this emotion now for the truth?
That yearning lives in every last note, every last recess in his guarded heart. A love song, at the last of its chords, to perhaps be sent into the ears of the one who he desired to hear it the most…
Yet for now, a lullaby it remains. A longing refrain that leaves Guydelot’s heart echoing, ringing up to a faceless moon with a final, reverent chord rolled off his fingertips, bathed in moonlight and brimming with a fragile hope.