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I.
Life in the First means settling on a list of finalities G'raha was not anticipating among his — admittedly very expansive — list of those he is.
One finality: he has every expectation of dying. He is not the hero of the story, and if he somehow manages to make it to the end, well, it will only be with the Warrior at his side. Only once he has helped avert the end of this world in some small way might the Source be spared. There are no such losses as great as the calamity he has escaped from or the world as it stands currently, but smaller losses are still losses.
While none may be so grievous as the end of their world, he finds they build up over time: death by a thousand paper cuts rather than a mercifully quick end. If he's not simply ill (which seems wildly unlikely, given the sheer amount of magic at his command), the latest loss appears to merely be taste. The last few years in particular have braced him for these incoming losses, a series of suspicions piling atop each other every morning as he looks in a mirror and tries to assess just how much further the crystal has progressed.
Against the weight and scale of the loss he has seen, it feels childish to mourn something as simple as a meal, and yet the salad he had a few weeks ago had effectively been the last he tasted, and, in truth, he doesn't even recall what kind it was.
It hadn't mattered at the time.
From a few bites, G'raha knows without needing to look that there are nuts studded throughout the salad, along with dried fruits – not cherries, not yet with how fussy the trees have been, but some sort of berry.
The greens are tough, the edges slightly wilted from the neverending light, and the dressing is more vinegar than a vinaigrette, but it is a perfectly serviceable salad; or it would be if it tasted like anything at all. There is the sensation of oil on his tongue, the crunch of the nuts through extra texture between his teeth, but that is the extent. Years of bland Sharlayan food had prepared him for this moment and would serve him better than bitterness, so he swallows that down, too. This is just another piece of himself the Tower has taken as payment for services rendered.
Will his need to eat fade next? Can the Tower understand the necessity of consuming food to stay alive? He certainly hopes so, or many of the fledgling plans he's been working on are going to become very inconvenient.
No longer hungry with the abrupt mix of anxiety and frustration, G'raha pushes the bowl away as if it were full of worms and dirt instead of mildly wilted leafy greens and drags the book he's spent the last day pouring through closer.
The air rips open with a gasp behind him, and G'raha closes his eyes. This would have been the final nail in that coffin if his appetite were not already far gone. Emet-Selch must have a special sense for these sorts of things – knowing the most irritating moment to come by. Asicans are terribly talented.
"If only I had a door you could utilize." G'raha sighs, pushing back from the table to put Emet-Selch in full view. Why the Ascian engages in these little visits is beyond him, but for some godsforsaken reason, ever since G'raha arrived on the First, Emet-Selch has seen fit to impose his presence in the Ocular whenever he's not actively attempting to end the world. In truth, the Exarch suspects a good portion of that is the same reason he doesn't do more than complain about the visits: there's a convenience in your enemy being this close, this accessible.
Heedless of G'raha's irritation, Emet-Selch peers over his shoulder at the salad and takes a delicate sniff. "A rather sad offering, all things told."
As if it isn't somewhat his fault, the ground rejects most attempts to cultivate it.
G'raha crosses his arms on the table, waiting for whatever the point of this visit is to make itself apparent. Emet-Selch makes himself comfortable as he always does, poking and prodding at G'raha's stacks of books and paperwork. If he does happen to move anything, he places it back where it came from, as if the point is simply to be irritating and nosy rather than actively hindering.
"Given the struggles your people have had with maintaining a steady stream of supplies recently, I had thought to hear much more crowing about how this salad was proof of man's indomitable spirit in the face of adversity or somesuch." Emet-Selch takes the proffered chair when G'raha waves a hand to it rather than suffer him looming annoyingly. "Troubles, Exarch? Don't tell me – is the dressing not to your liking?"
It's not so far from the truth; G'raha's grateful for the hood, but it does nothing to hide the rueful twist to his lips. If this is to be a loss he must bear, then at least he can turn it into something useful.
"Hard to dislike something one cannot taste."
As he knew it would, Emet-Selch's attention piques. The rules of the game they play were established in one of their first meetings – information given for information received. Given this was – still is, in truth — the only way for him to glean any information on the Ascians outside outright spying, which was only middlingly successful, G'raha had agreed and decidedly did not think about the laundry list of good men with good intentions who had simply started with listening to an Ascian.
"Then 'tis safe to assume the fault lies not in the produce but in your body. How terribly unsurprising." Emet-Selch tugs the half-eaten salad over with one finger hooked against the bowl's rim. A sniff, and then he pushes it back with that same finger, turning gold eyes on G'raha instead. "But you do still need to eat?"
"That's two." Two morsels of truth are offered, meaning he receives two in return. Emet-Selch inclines his head, evidently satisfied with the information provided so far. G'raha nods slowly. "As far as I am aware. I still feel hunger and feel poorly if I do not eat. I'm not certain how long that will continue."
"That last one is commentary, not a third truth," Emet-Selch says, amused. G'raha nods in response. It is the natural conclusion to the series of rebellions his body seems intent on putting him through, reduced into a single derisive word. Commentary. As if he didn't intend the barb to land as well as it did, Emet-Selch flaps a hand at the salad. "Well, it does not seem you were missing much."
Conveniently, Emet-Selch seems to find as much enjoyment in irritating him as he does, otherwise these conversations would be even more tiresome, Emet-Selch leaving every time G'raha is wound up. Rather than leave, he lingers in most cases, seemingly a glutton for punishment if staying around 'feeble creatures' is such an inconvenience.
"You have so much disdain for even the most mundane of concepts." Not even a boring salad has escaped Emet-Selch's disdain and disgust with this world he's suffered to endure. It is so remarkably petty. To use one of his answers on this feels like a waste, an indulgence for himself in a place and time where he can allow himself no such luxuries. Mayhap it is, but the longer he sits on it the more he needs to know. "So many lifetimes – so many lives. You would have witnessed countless civilizations rise and fall, countless technological advancements, countless art and political movements, and none of that was worth appreciating? Not a one? All of these Shards – I find it unlikely there is nothing."
"Appreciation?" Emet-Selch scoffs, picking up the book G'raha had been fighting to get through the last three days; pages twice as heavy from the pieces of paper he's stuffed in as bookmarks, notes scribbled to himself about conjugations of past participles and tenses from books in the First. His handwriting is admittedly poor in all of those, and Emet-Selch picks up one of the sheets of paper, gives it and then G'raha a dubious look before putting the whole thing back together on the table with a put-upon sigh. "There is less and little to appreciate when it is a pale imitation of what used to be."
G'raha wants to protest that isn't enough – that's barely adequate to the truth he'd given — but Emet-Selch would argue it and they would waste more time in the arguing than if G'raha simply acquiesced, moved on with it, and applied pressure in a different way.
"But you have traveled," G'raha presses and levels his fork at Emet-Selch once he's taken back his salad. He still does need to eat for now, so he may as well do two unpleasant things at once to make it more efficient. "That does not count – it qualifies as mundane."
"Doesn't it just," Emet-Selch sighs. "Very well. Yes, I've traveled over this shard and many, many of the others. Far beyond the reaches of where any one of you in your current state could hope to travel – the ground untouched by the disappointment you lot bring."
The confirmation of his suspicions doesn't mean much; Emet-Selch has been alive for an unimaginable amount of time so that he would have traveled is not shocking.
"Why?" G'raha almost wants to take it back the moment it escapes, but upon sitting on it – no. He wants to know why someone who holds so much disgust for the world would ever bother to explore it absent his general plotting and machinations. Were Emet-Selch anyone else, his inclination might be to think it was to find something worth saving – if he found aught else depressing, the world a shade of its former self, perhaps he wanted to find something interesting or familiar. But even that seems…unlikely.
The question sits heavier than he anticipates in the quiet of the room, Emet-Selch watching him with an unreadable expression. "Various lives had need of traveling – to remain in one area would have been useless."
That's not an answer; that's avoidance. Very rarely does he have the ability to dig, to press Emet-Selch for answers he's owed, and he takes the chance eagerly, pressing a hand against the table. "That's not a truth in full."
"When we are successful," Emet-Selch says with that casual, murderous calm, discussing the matter of wiping the slate clean of G'raha and everyone G'raha has come to care for — and even those he has not — as though remarking on the weather. "There are those who will have questions about the world as it was once it ceases to be fragmented. They would – not find beauty in this wretched mess because there is none to find — but they would find the distance allows them a measure of... appreciation."
"Appreciation you cannot find, but can grant to them," G'raha finishes, perhaps too observant because Emet-Selch's eyes narrow and he does not deny it. He simply sits there with a mocking half-smirk, discussing their casual destruction and his inability to find any value in the world around them.
There's no satisfaction in knowing his enemy has wandered for thousands and thousands of years in a place he loathed; there is just a deep well of unhappiness that threatens to become unearned pity.
This is why he will ultimately be a footnote in the Warrior's story. The Warrior would take this as a challenge – would say he simply wasn't looking in the right places that there's something to be found and would probably be successful if given half the chance.
G'raha looks at Emet-Selch's borrowed face, the casual nonchalance at these literal life and death discussions, and understands there is no world in which they maintain what they want to love and protect, and Emet-Selch still exists.
II.
It is not often G'raha has reason to leave the immediate area surrounding the Tower unless he makes a reason. The more he finds the Tower steals parts of him, the more frequent his trips outside its borders, unwilling to suffer another situation like the salad despite the strain it places on him.
In some cases, the ragtag group assembled beneath the Tower insists one of them handles whatever the task is, and in most cases, they're correct – there is a better use of his time and attention. Given his responsibility for trying to establish trade between Lakeland and Fanow, he will not see this errand shirked to another.
Corpses bloat in the road, blood soaked into the vibrant lilac grass, forming eerie pockets of rust and Light-bleached fields where sin eaters were successfully slain, their bodies dissipating and leaving behind nothing but a stain. He has seen enough death and destruction to put together a loose story – their group met with another, survivors, perhaps, and they journeyed together until they were set upon. It's the same story he's heard countless times since arriving, and he will listen to numerous more before this ends. That doesn't make it any easier to bear.
Slowly, he picks his way through the overturned wagons, robes snagging on a cracked piece of wood. In one of the tipped over crates are the supplies from Fanow, making the corpses sprawled yards away those he had corresponded with originally, if he had to guess; they were likely leading the caravan. A man still has his sword as if he'd never had the time to pull it before being slain. It is, all of it, a horrific waste.
Dragging corpses is arduous work, but there are few left at this point, and he stifles his guilt at the small amount of relief he feels upon realizing those puddles indicate bodies he will not have to pile with the rest.
When the request was issued, the task was to simply burn the bodies so that their souls might return and no one else would fall attempting to return the bodies to the Woods. Whether or not this is custom or a kindness meant to spare more loss of life, G'raha is not sure, but he takes the belongings he can from the bodies, using some of the less broken boxes of supplies to keep them separate and safe for him to bring back.
So focused is he on his task he misses the tell-tale sound of Emet-Selch's arrival but does not miss the disgusted noise the man makes upon coming closer. "Sin eater destruction is certainly ripe, is it not?"
G'raha, not wanting to deal with the casual disrespect Emet-Selch seems keen to impose upon the dead, ignores him and continues piling bodies from the wreckage as gently as he can manage. He cannot smell anything if there is a smell to be had; in truth, he hadn't realized it until Emet-Selch pointed it out.
His memory fills in the gaps helpfully; he's no stranger to the scent of death, the overripe, sickly smell of flesh rotting in the sun. With the loss of taste and smell, so too has his need for food seemingly vanished, yet he still stands. His body does not seem to remember this series of inconvenient truths because the memory of meat rotting, burning, sits heavy on his tongue and has his gorge rising. G'raha steps back from the pile of corpses to inhale shakily, no longer downwind.
"If you do not intend to help, I would ask you to leave," G'raha says when he's confident he can speak without attempting to vomit. He returns back to his task until the six bodies are piled among the worst of the wreckage with nothing to salvage, the best burial pyre he can muster. Emet-Selch is still watching him, watching as the fire consumes the kindling first.
Once more, G'raha is terribly grateful he cannot smell; the Warrior hated the scent of burnt hair more than anything else and had told him that much during one of the few late-night talks they'd had around a fire with the rest of NOAH. At the time, he had thought little of it. Now, he thinks about the sheer number of bodies the Warrior had been responsible for burning or had simply come upon already burnt, and that casual confession makes more sense.
Emet-Selch shifts until he is at no risk of being downwind but otherwise seems content to simply watch from underneath a tree as G'raha begins the unenviable work of making sense of the mess for the patrol to come after. He'd had to kill three sin eaters lingering at the site, picking at the wreckage, and assumed most, if not all were members of the traveling party.
With the oppressive Light above, he'll have to ensure the fire is extinguished safely lest he risk it spreading amongst the dry grass, but at least the hardest part is done. Silent until now, his shadow finally opens his mouth to speak, but G'raha is sweaty, exhausted, and in no mood to weather whatever observations Emet-Selch has about this destruction. "I'm finished; I would thank you to keep your criticism to yourself."
"You're quite certain?" Emet-Selch sweeps his eyes over the wreckage and pauses, a furrow to his brows that wasn't there before.
G'raha follows the gaze but only sees the wreckage – crates broken and spilled open, their supplies tipped over. He's gone through the worst of what was spread across the ground but hasn't dug into that properly yet after slaying the sin eaters. He'd get as much done as he could before the Lakeland patrol arrived, and they would bring everything back and determine how best to return belongings to the family when they were all safe. If he'd left what was clearly the personal belongings for last, well, he didn't much care if Emet-Selch thought him weaker for it, but he didn't particularly relish having to paw through the belongings of the dead.
"You may wish to look again."
Exhausted but unwilling to risk it if it were necessary, G'raha picks his way through the wreckage of the tipped over wagons. He had left most of it alone upon his first pass, figuring a stray animal was more likely to use it as a shelter at worst. Upon a second pass, he supposes it's large enough for someone to hide in, were they determined. It takes more effort than he'd like to admit to wrench the wagon over and push aside the detritus, but then his hand brushes fur and not cloth or splintered wood.
G'raha gives up on dignity in a heartbeat, wrenching up his robes into one hand, yanking his sleeves back with his teeth to shove boxes aside, unearthing a too-small body in the wreckage. Trembling fingers press against their throat, and when he confirms they yet breathe, there is no care for distance from the Tower, the strain it will place on him; he pours as much healing magic into her as he can, bruises fading from purple and black to mere smudges of shadow and then vanishing entirely. The knock she had taken to the skull reknits itself together, skin making itself whole once more with only the blood smeared on her face left as an indication of anything happening at all.
As carefully as he can manage, he scoops the child into his arms and begins the process of extracting both of them from the wreckage, hands trembling. She's warm, but the blood at her temple endlessly concerns despite the sheer amount of healing he expended. Held against his chest, he can feel her breathing change from labored and wet to smoother, quieter. Not a wild animal hiding in the shade, but a viis – two, maybe three turns at most.
"Unlucky," Emet-Selch sighs quietly and oh, if G'raha hated Emet-Selch's disdainful expression, he hates this one so, so much more. Pity. "To perish with the rest would have been a kinder fate."
Fury rises in him before he can stifle it, cradling the child gently.
"Any loss of life we can avert is cause for celebration," G'raha grits out, and with a twist of his wrist, flares the funeral pyre to an unbearable heat and then douses it with a blizzard until there's nothing left but soggy ashes. Both he and Emet-Selch mark the full-body flinch, the way his hand trembles once it's done and his own blood drips down the line of his fingers into the hungry earth below as the Tower steals another few ilms of flesh for the privilege.
So be it.
G'raha shifts the child's weight in his arms, barely anything at all, despite his exhaustion.
"Well, it seems you have your hands full." Emet-Selch clasps his own together cheerfully. "Might you be forgetting something?"
"Thank you," G'raha says, because there is no reason not to – Emet-Selch didn't have to tell him. He would have discovered her eventually, but there was no telling if he would have been in time if he was in time. Travel between the small pockets of civilization was not anything close to maintained in a traditional sense, but they did have some rules. Children were always declared, along with the sick. That the party had not was a question he would not receive any answer for right now, so he turns his attention to the path back to the Tower while Emet-Selch gives him a mocking little wave goodbye.
III.
"I'm not tired," Lyna mutters against his throat, her arms draped over his shoulders, fisted in his robes. Picking her up is more of a struggle than he anticipated – it is not her size or weight that gives him issue, though she has sprouted up in the last few years, all gangly limbs and long ears. It is not her growth that is the issue: it is the failures of his own body, one more line on the ever-growing ledger titled what the Tower has stolen, that prevents him from hefting her or any of the other children as easily any longer.
Lyna does not seem to care; she attaches to him like a limpet as he fetches her from where she's been watching the Crystarium guards practice, wide-eyed despite the late hour and the lights-out call he knows she must have heard.
"You might be a bit more convincing if you were walking and not being carried, my dear," G'raha says with no small amount of amusement, feeling her yawn hugely against his chest. One ear twitches against his nose and he tips his head back lest he discovers whether he still has the ability to sneeze these days.
"I could walk," Lyna says mulishly, kicking her legs, tiny feet knocking against his back as if to illustrate it. G'raha readjusts his grip and hears the air tear open behind them, feels the chill of a shadow at his back that is not his own as Emet-Selch follows them.
"I'm certain you could, but thank you for indulging an old man."
G'raha gets her settled in her bunk and says goodnight to the others still awake at this hour before making his escape, his shadow falling into step at his heel.
Around them, the city has sprouted successfully – Lyna may not have her own room, but she and the other children have a building, there is a classroom, an infirmary – there has been so much progress since the last time Emet-Selch deigned to visit them, and G'raha quashes the traitorous urge to show any of it off.
Emet-Selch is still the enemy and G'raha is loath to show the softest parts of himself off, uncertain if he even deserves the sense of pride he feels looking at all these accomplishments around them.
"If you're going to be patronizing about the work we've put in, I'll ask you to save it for next time."
On the side streets, Emet-Selch is visible, but when G'raha makes his way to the guards stationed outside the Tower, it is a notable Goodnight, Exarch and there is no inquiry as to his newly-acquired shadow.
Unsurprisingly, Emet-Selch has not opted to leave entirely. He's lounging in what G'raha refuses to think of as Emet-Selch's seat, the same one he occupies whenever he lingers in the office. "Gil for your thoughts," he prompts when G'raha is not forthcoming with sufficient entertainment.
"I'm wondering why you're here," G'raha says. It's the truth, and it is also an avoidance. Emet-Selch rolls his eyes.
"Because I'm bored. That does not count, as I'm certain you're aware."
G'raha shrugs; he wasn't expecting it to. Instead, he weighs the type of truth he wants to give and what sort of truth he wants to receive in turn.
"I've had the rather sobering realization that for all my plans and calculations, I am uncertain which will come first: the Tower removing my ability to move easily or Lyna outgrowing my ability to pick her up." A humorless smile. "I dread the result in either case."
Emet-Selch hums, not entirely surprised, but he's got that look he gets when he's marginally more interested in something, like G'raha's successfully gained the total weight of his attention instead of half by admitting he's a little miserable, too.
"I heard word you received a new influx of refugees as recently as yesterday and they were in quite the sorry state." G'raha does not deny this and can guess where the question is going. "On our little walk, I notice there is still naught but one lone chirurgeon in the quaint little infirmary you've built."
"Is there a question you intend to ask at any point?"
"Let me see," Emet-Selch says, orders casually, like it's nothing to request the very thing G'raha has taken such great pains to keep hidden from the general populace.
G'raha, regrettably, owes him an answer. Were this the first time they had done this song and dance, perhaps he would have protested further. Now, more is at risk. Now, more than ever, he doesn't know how much straddles the line of too much information. That the crystal's presence grows in his body each day is not secret information to Emet-Selch, however, so after an irritated look over, he nudges back the hood. Despite the way the causal order and its expected efficacy grind at him, G'raha begins the process of adjusting his robes, letting the outer layers slide off with a slither of fine fabric down to the ground.
The Tower's chill seems to sink through him the moment he's down to the light shift underneath the robes, what skin remains prickling from the cool air and not Emet-Selch's lingering gaze.
The crystal seems to have taken the most interest in his dominant hand, radiating out from his chest, though he expected no less. It's been months – years, even — since Emet-Selch's last visit, and the crystal's progression has increased drastically through his actions; that it would go for the parts of him most useful and cannibalize them does not surprise him.
"What are you doing in this Tower to cause this level of…degradation?" Emet-Selch reaches out and spreads his hand across the stone to see if it has any give; in the newest parts, it does, but in most it is as unyielding as the walls around them. His hands always feel so much icier than G'raha expects them to be. "Certainly not just acting as the city's healer."
"You already asked your question and I answered," G'raha replies, and the edge in his voice makes Emet-Selch smile. It's not a question G'raha can risk answering, not in a way that would count for their game and not in a way that would do anything but risk his plans. Besides: it isn't as though he's been successful yet. The last thing he needs is Emet-Selch making an already-difficult task more unbearably strenuous.
Emet-Selch prowls around him, gloved fingers tracing the lines of where crystal intersects with flesh, the delicate parts of him where flesh has been rubbed raw from cold stone. The inside of his arm against his sides are the worst culprits when not wearing robes. The insides of his fingers are the most accessible indication of the mess the Tower is slowly making of him, scabbed and rubbed raw when he doesn't expend the energy to heal. Often, he doesn't, when the skin will simply be irritated bloody moments later and it feels a little too like ushering in the end a little faster to heal it.
Emet-Selch observes this with as much impassiveness as he does the rest – noting it but not finding it worthy enough to comment on.
"Your inspection still counts as a second question," G'raha says while Emet-Selch thumbs aside the shift to better look at his shoulder where the crystal has bled into his shoulderblade as well as his chest, spreading down his dominant hand in a slow but hungry wave. This close, he can feel Emet-Selch's breath against his bare skin, warm in contrast to his hands as he is examined like a bug underneath a glass. "Why did you have children?"
He doesn't miss Emet-Selch's little twitch of the lips as if he's asked the wrong question – it's a suspicion, based on what little he knows about this body Emet-Selch wears, but whether or not it was actually Emet-Selch who fathered the children or it was the actual person Solus is the question. Either way, G'raha suspects that even if Emet-Selch was not Solus the entire time, he would have had no small amount of interaction with the host's children.
"Because it was advantageous. Expected, I suppose. It would have destabilized the region further before I wished it to, had I left it without an heir of some sort." Emet-Selch's lips twist, the smile jarring against the emptiness of his expression.
"I'm given to understand one passed while young," G'raha says, very carefully.
Emet-Selch's gaze is unwavering. "He passed, as they all do, and I made due."
It's the nonchalance with which he says it that is most striking. G'raha steps more delicately, wishing he hadn't thought to initiate this conversation while wearing precious little. "I'm sorry for your loss all the same. 'Tis no easy thing to weather."
"Why, Exarch, I've heard you insist many a time you are no parent to the orphaned waif, and yet to hear such fatherly empathy from your lips…" Emet-Selch's head tips, the bait easy to spot at this point for the deflection it is. G'raha doesn't turn away from him, starting the arduous process of putting his robes back on despite the way stone grinds against itself in the quiet of the room. "What, was that answer not sufficient?"
If he wanted to be obnoxious, he could say no, but it is proportional to the truth he was given so G'raha shakes his head, letting it go.
"Why do you make such a point of denying the role you've stepped into? Initially I suspected 'twas to prevent any accusations of favoritism, but she's far from the only orphan this world has created and you are exacting in your equality when interacting with all of them."
"Careful," G'raha says, putting tea on for lack of anything better to do; he can still drink, even if he can't taste, and the warmth is nice with the chill at night, especially when it seems to linger despite having put his robes back on. "That could almost be construed as something like a compliment."
"Heavens forfend," Emet-Selch says dryly. "Answer the question, Exarch."
"Losing a parent is difficult – losing a second, a third, even if not through blood? No. Better they think of me with as much distance as possible. The situation allows for precious little distance, so there is all the more reason to maintain it." Let Emet-Selch read into that what he will, but his time on the First is finite. Each day he gets closer to summoning her, to unwriting this past Emet-Selch is all too content to see to the end. "And… the concerns about favoritism. I would see her succeed on her own merits and her own determination, both of which she has plenty of."
"And no part of you feels – none at all feels as if you are no better than those workers you employ to tend to the livestock, as if by your coddling behind these walls you are not simply plumping up a sacrifice? No part of you feels the kindness would have been to let her pass in that wretched little valley?"
Once again, the rations have been halved while they try to grow enough and supplement what they cannot with trade with middling levels of success. He, along with the fledgling guard, have cleaned the wreckage of countless settlements and travelers who never make it to the Crystarium. The world has nearly ended several times and they have weathered it with what grace they could for a future where they would not need to.
"No," G'raha rasps, and it is almost entirely not a lie. He grasps the kettle off the fire with the stone hand despite a screech of metal on stone and pours two cups with a hand that cannot easily shake when bending alone is a struggle. "No. I want to shape this star into a world where she can exist safely with everyone else here trying to build a world among the wreckage. I want to watch her turn that determination to something other than survival and there is precious little I would not do to see that happen."
Emet-Selch hums, and at G'raha's unimpressed look, laughs. "So ominous, dear Exarch. Rest assured, despite your obvious weak spot where the girl is, I've no interest in leveraging that particular tool at this point."
At this point. It is about what he expected, even if it's not quite a relief to know it still places her in a measure of danger. G'raha inclines his head, kettle settled back onto the fire, tea cups brought to the table.
Emet-Selch takes the glass with one hand and then with the other, glove removed, he reaches out expectantly and G'raha gingerly places his hand out to be examined. There is no damage either by heat or pressure; the stone is heavy in the cool embrace of Emet-Selch's hand.
"But, she is your favorite," Emet-Selch says, casual as you please even while viper-fast he winds his hand around G'raha's wrist, too tight for him to withdraw. "Is she not?"
G'raha's lack of answer is a tell in and of itself.
IV.
On the sickbed, Lyna lays unmoving, pale. She is months away from death and yet, looking at her, G'raha cannot call what remainder she has left life either.
The grievous injury she'd suffered has long since healed, but the taint of the Light is unmistakable.
It is a death sentence.
G'raha has been staring at her unmoving form for the better part of a day, and still, the scale of this failure does not sink in, if it ever will. Lyna will come in the door, hale and whole, if he simply blinks.
The slow deaths are the worst – Crystarium guards have various requests they can file in a worst-case scenario. Some opt to go to the desert, where they can pass under the care of a kind hand. Others sign a release: if needed, they can return to the peace of the aetherial sea if there is someone with their patrol who has agreed to participate in necessary mercy killings. That number is, understandably, not terribly significant.
He is not sure what Lyna would have opted for because she is not a part of the Crystarium guard yet, she is simply too stubborn and brave by half, and now she is going to die because he cannot find a way to fix this that will not doom them all anyway.
It is a forced acceleration of his previous plans – abstractly, he has known he would need a way to contain the excess Light and would need a place to displace it afterward. His own vessel – any mortal vessel could not hope to hold it for any extended period of time without falling to the taint it presents. The Warrior of Light is no ordinary, mortal vessel, though, and given the breadth of her blessings, she is the only one who stands a chance at it, however temporary.
Second on that list is G'raha Tia himself. Not for any respectable amount of time, no, but long enough to bring the Light somewhere else? That he can manage. Has to manage.
This does not solve the immediate problem here.
For most of her life she has not been allowed in the Tower, a lingering fear of G'raha's that she would become trapped, displaced somehow if the Tower defenses didn't take issue with her. That Emet-Selch can walk its halls openly is a failing of either him or the Tower, and G'raha has his suspicions about which is responsible.
Emet-Selch he is willing to risk; Lyna and the others, he is not.
These are exceptional circumstances, though, in the worst sort of way.
Behind him, a portal opens, and Emet-Selch slouches through the resulting tear as if summoned. He gives the room an idle once-over, pausing on the form on the bed, G'raha at its side. The hood does no small amount to hide his expression but Emet-Selch comes closer and after this long, he knows Emet-Selch does not need to see under the hood entirely to be able to read him: the hunched shoulders, the trembling grip on Lyna's still hand.
"Well. I saw something occurred, given the breadth of the destruction wrought, but I was otherwise occupied." Emet-Selch drags a chair closer to the bedside and braces his elbows on his knees, peering over Lyna's pale, still form. "I had simply assumed my sight was faulty. I'm well aware your own is lacking."
"Please leave." There is no tone to his voice. G'raha does not beg but thinks he would if necessary. None of his plans had accounted for this – he had maintained distance for this very reason, had refused to think about the implications of any of his actions, and now–
"No, I don't think I will." Emet-Selch reclines in the seat and smirks blithely at G'raha's fury at being denied. "Oh, I think you'll want to hear what I have to say, but if you'd rather try your hand at making me leave, by all means." The issue isn't that he doesn't know how to solve this. The problem is that if he's wrong – if any part of him is inaccurate in any of his calculations, he will not get a second chance. While it will not have been wasted — it could never be a waste — it would doom countless others, including the Warrior, and that is even more unacceptable a loss than Lyna. Emet-Selch's tone drops, G'raha's silence evidently too long. "Ah, but I arrive too late. You already have a way. You are not grieving, you are guilty. How interesting."
"Would you have me beg for time alone?" G'raha grits out. "Will that satisfy you?"
As if G'raha has said nothing at all, Emet-Selch leans in.
"If you have a way you believe will save her but will not act on it, then I am left to assume whatever it is would endanger you greatly while you still have your ends to achieve. Those ends are more important than one little viera – ah, viis, here." For all the words sound as if they're gloating, they're uttered blandly. They're observations, Emet-Selch working through the mental mystery of why the Exarch would be seated at her bedside and not taking actions he has available to take, instead grieving her as if she were already gone. "It is not so much Light, even. Respectable quarry for one so young and untrained, I suppose."
G'raha does not have the keen eyes Emet-Selch does: the only thing he sees when he looks at Lyna is a body, breathing shallowly, wasting away because G'raha is too much of a coward to save her.
"It was an accident. One of the smaller sin eaters scavenging. Lyna saw the attack happen from the gates and ran to assist rather than get help." He forcibly releases her hand when he realizes how tightly he grasps it, withdrawing the crystal-tainted hand to use his flesh and blood one instead, gentler. "Too brave by half."
Emet-Selch's silence extends longer than he anticipates it will and, despite the struggle to look away from her, he finds himself looking at the Ascian.
"You have identified a way to siphon off the excess Light," Emet-Selch prompts, and when G'raha doesn't deny it or react proceeds. "Then the question must be about vessel and disposal. All that pesky Light must go somewhere. If not disposed of, then dissipated would do well enough."
"Forgive me if my skills in manipulating tainted aether are found wanting," G'raha mutters, reclining back in the chair to face him more fully, uncertain what that odd look on Emet-Selch’s face means. "With such a small amount of Light, I could feasibly attempt to extract it and house it in a facsimile of white auracite. The Tower, perhaps, though I'm uncertain the full scale of the implications were I to try."
"How convenient you have a veritable font of Darkness as a captive audience," Emet-Selch says so casually G'raha is sure he must be mishearing.
"Pardon?" G'raha says because there's absolutely no way he is correct.
"I believe I was particularly clear." Emet-Selch tilts his head. "Losing this girl would do nothing to dissuade you from your current path of being a thorn in my side, nor would it stop whatever your overall plan is. It would make you more determined. A loss like this would further solidify your resolve, and you would become even more annoying without the benefit of weaknesses I could leverage later."
Too shocked to do anything but stare, Emet-Selch allows him the barest moment of stupor before he gestures to the still body in the bed. "Sometime today, if you do not mind; I do have other things to do with my time."
It is a risk to reveal this much of his work over the last few decades, but a calculated risk – he cannot, will not lose Lyna, not if there is a way to save her that doesn't risk everything he's worked so hard to build. G'raha moves with a speed he hasn't found need for in decades. The circle that forms around her glows with the sickly weight of the Light, and plucking it from her, containing it in himself is more straightforward than he expects, but then he has spent the better part of a century planning. When it's done, the crystal threaded throughout him feels hot to the touch, the Tower straining with the effort of keeping him functional, keeping him whole.
On the bed Lyna sleeps with color on her cheeks once more, yawning hugely as if it is just another night in the Crystarium as if he did not nearly lose her. G'raha doesn't have much of a stomach left these days, but what is left turns and he forcibly straightens himself, using the staff to bear his weight more than he would like. By the time he reaches the Ocular, sweat has beaded at his forehead, the nape of his neck and slid down the line of his spine. He could weather this if needed, for as long as was necessary; it is just another discomfort among so many.
The Tower wouldn't let its tool fade so quickly, but if Emet-Selch suddenly decided to renege on his deal– well. It wouldn't kill him yet. The Tower, or Emet-Selch himself would likely do it sooner but it would be...uncomfortable.
"All of this for what?" Emet-Selch asks, prowling closer until G'raha's back is to the wall and he's forced to look up at the other man, hyper-aware of how cool the Ascian is when he is this warm and they are this close. G'raha's back hits the Tower walls with a thud of stone on stone, muffled faintly by his robes and Emet-Selch closes the distance. "Fighting against the inevitable, thrashing against fate when I would deliver you to a better, brighter one."
"You would see all of us crushed under the boot of your better future," G'raha retorts, not altogether surprised when Emet-Selch's gloved hands cup his face, tilting his face up. It is not the first time he has been touched in a decade, but it is the first touch he has allowed from someone not a child in years. A gloved finger presses against his mouth, strokes over his lower lip and when they part, skims over his bottom teeth as if he's testing to see if G'raha would bite him.
Inexplicably, he does not, even as the Darkness writhes and seethes around Emet-Selch's form, blessedly, welcomingly chilled against his too-warm body. Something in him — the Light, certainly, strains forward eager, hungry.
"I would see you recreated and reborn in a world where you are not less than nothing," Emet-Selch murmurs, kissing him with a rush of Darkness that is as cold and oppressive as it is a cleansing fire, and the relief he finds in it is a betrayal all on its own.
Long after, Lyna's settled in her quarters, the Light expunged and the chirurgeon summoned whom he trusts – a woman he's known since the days of terrified refugees outside the Tower, whose child he'd helped deliver, the only person with any healing ability for far too long outside himself. When she takes over Lyna's care, it's with a clasped hand against his that he cannot feel and a firm hug he doesn't deserve, reassurances that this apparently miraculous recovery will be kept secret. It's clear she assumes he is trying to replicate it – and oh, if he could, he would take all that corrupted Light unto himself long before the Warrior ever had to be called here.
Emet-Selch finds him at the top of the Tower again, with his legs dangling over the edge of the railing, straddling the stone where it's cut out to make a fence. His hands are knit loosely, chin atop them. The Ascian folds himself next to G'raha without asking – without needing to ask, maybe, because, at this moment, his presence is not wholly unwelcome.
The view would be objectively gorgeous if it weren't for all the Light. Even with it, the glittering of the fledgling city underneath as a beacon of safety is beautiful like a bubble; if pressed too hard, he worries it will break.
He will break.
"Thank you," G'raha rasps, because it needs to be said because he cannot say it enough times and fully make Emet-Selch understand how he could have bore the weight of this loss as he has so many others out of necessity, but it would have irrevocably broken a piece of him. Why Emet-Selch would prevent that from happening – wouldn't G'raha even more broken suit his needs better than a defiant version of him?
"Think nothing of it," Emet-Selch says, knowing there is no world in which G'raha does not turn this event over in his mind every evening for the next decade. There is no amount of truth he could offer equal to what Emet-Selch has done, not with maintaining what he has so painstakingly spent decades arranging. There is nothing he can do to make this equal, yet Emet-Selch has not mentioned it. G'raha will not ask; if this does not count as a debt owed, he is still owed an answer.
V
The Warrior doesn't smile often, but there are few reasons to smile lately. This is the closest he finds her: Thancred, Alisaie, and Alphinuad facing off against her as they put on a show for the rest of the Crystarium guard and assorted populace.
It is a battle for fun, not for survival, which means there is a good portion of showmanship, of goading back and forth between all of them, the Warrior holding her own against a good showing by all three, but it's clear to G'raha who will win.
At his side, Emet-Selch watches, leaning over the railing while the wind blows his hair about, not opting to wear his hood.
"She is possessed of a rather impressive battle prowess," Emet-Selch allows, and they watch as she slings Thancred across the makeshift arena to a slew of excited hollering. The black and gold jacket she had been wearing is slipped off, draped over a fence, and with bare arms, she slings her ax back up and gestures to them. Again.
She's beautiful like this. She's gorgeous all the time, certainly, but here and now, allowing herself to be distracted, to revel in the friends they've yet managed to save, to be a little more like herself instead of the Warrior of Darkness, a figurehead… he finds her particularly stunning.
Emet-Selch's laughter is shocking with how loud it is; G'raha turns, ears flat, a clear tell without the safety and anonymity of his hood. "Can I help you?"
"You are exceptionally lucky – or perhaps unlucky. She is remarkably obtuse." Emet-Selch turns his attention to the gathered crowd. But I see, goes unsaid. So be it; it's long since been obvious the Warrior is his glaring weak point among all others.
"I'm certain I don't know what you mean." G'raha tugs his hood up against the wind and turns his attention to the crowd. "The wind – it makes it hard to hear up here. You understand."
Emet-Selch scoffs but doesn't push the issue, and together they watch as she thrashes three of the Scions and then subsequent parties who try to test themselves against her. She's kind about it in most cases, giving tips on how to adjust footing, when to pause and when to press an opening.
"And what of you?" G'raha asks, pulling on a thread he's been considering for decades. The way Emet-Selch talks about the Warrior is too familiar, too intimate to be anything but care. "Certainly you have better things to do than spend the afternoon watching your enemy spar, and yet here you are. Just as you had better things to do than save Y'shtola or any other aid you have rendered."
Emet-Selch does not watch him, eyes trained on the Warrior as she stretches her hands up to the daylight, tips her head back into the warmth of sunlight gratefully. When she sees them, tiny specks at the Tower's balcony, her hand lifts and waves. Emet-Selch flinches, the barest flex of his hands against the railing as if it were an attack all on its own.
G'raha turns, reclining against the railing, more confident than ever about his suspicions. "I have suspected for some time: she was someone important to you in the past. Someone whom you want to see this future you wish to build at the expense of everything else."
There is no response because he is right. That's fine. He doesn't need one.
G'raha looks down at the Warrior standing in a ring of adversaries, back straight, ax at the ready. "I would imagine you would not have done half of what you have for her were she not very similar to whomever you knew — more than you expected, even, I'd wager. My question is: would the person she was all those years in the past if she is so similar to the one we know now, thank you for what you have done in her name?"
Emet-Selch doesn't seem to hear him as the teleport rips him from the rooftop; that's fine. The wind up here is deafening.