Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Master Alphinaud, you must not give in to despair. So long as you and Seike yet walk free, we may still set things right.

It is an incredible thing, how perspective can shift so sharply in the course of hours — how something so given, so obvious, can easily be ripped from your hands.

Alphinaud isn’t too sure that he believes Pipin’s words when he hears them. He thinks the person he was yesterday would have.

Seike doesn’t speak a word.

The entire way from the disaster in Ul’dah to being dropped off on the outskirts of Gridania the weight of her quiet grows, until its a thousand-tonne weight saddled across Alphinaud’s chest that makes every breath a hard-fought battle.

Pipin and the merchant they ride with do their best to ease the oppressive tension and after they leave, Cid picks up the torch, mustering up some measure of hollow cheer as he claps Alphinaud around the shoulder and asks him if he wants to try his hand at steering the ship in a tone that makes him feel six years younger.

Alphinaud feels sick with it, violently and viscerally. He wants to retch at the pity, to throw up at the way both carriage and airship is far too spacious to hold only him and Seike. And Seike, larger-than-life-Seike, looks wrong huddling into a corner with her face ashen and drawn into a kind of determination that chills him to the bone.

Her hand never leaves her spear, eyes darting between Alphinaud and the road behind them.

Time flees him — it feels as though merely a minute has passed when Cid makes his landing on the border between Coerthas and Gridania, mouth twisted into something apologetic as he explains that they will have to journey the rest of the way on foot.

Most of what he says falls on deaf ears — Alphinaud is supplied with a coat, a scarf and another hearty clap to his shoulder, Seike and Cid share a look, and then it’s down to only the two of them.

Alphinaud looks at Seike’s back, mouth working over a thousand questions he’s not sure he wants the answer to and a thousand conversation starters that seem disgustingly mundane in the face of things. In the end, cowardice wins out, and he says nothing.

Cid’s airship takes to the sky in a rush of wind and heat.

Seike starts to walk.

There is no hesitation in her movement, no wavering or turning back; only sure steps and Alphinaud scrambling to follow while pulling the coat tight around himself and biting back the urge to bid her to slow down. Out of the two of them she knows best how far they have to travel; he just wasn’t expecting the pace to be quite that brutal.

Soft earth quickly gives way to permafrost and the lush, leafy woods of Gridania transition into silver-kissed pine trees, with icicles that glitter in the morning sun. Every once in a while Seike stops to close her eyes and the faintest pulse of aether leaves her before she corrects their course, occasionally coupled with a glance at the sun and a click of her tongue.

Alphinaud doesn’t have a way to keep track of how many hours they walk nor does he register when the permafrost changes into outright snow, he’s since long given up on admiring the landscape; aside from a quick break to drink and eat some dried fruit that Cid had to spare they haven’t stopped once. His legs are burning and so are his lungs — he’s barely keeping pace with Seike, who seems as unaffected now as she did when they began their journey.

With every step he tries anew to think of a way to start a conversation, but what words would make an event like this justice? Flowery words and elaborate apologies are all put together and discarded while he huffs his way forward with Seike’s broad back as his anchor. The knowledge strikes him that if he were to stop moving now, there’s no guarantee he could start back up again.

I am sorry for the way —

Pray forgive, but the others —

Had I known —

“What — What happened?” Is what he eventually blurts out after another hour of walking, so tired it’s a miracle the words are even audible.

It’s as good as it’s gonna get, he decides, miserably steeling himself. No more detaching himself from the reality of what his misguided ideals have wrought — he will take full responsibility for the mess he’s made of things, managing a singular deep breath as he squares his shoulders, both against the harsh wind and Seike’s reply.

“Ilberd took off Raubahn’s arm,” Seike says after a long while where they keep trudging forward in the snow, as if it’s not a world-shattering thing to bring up. “He might be dead.”

“His arm?” He repeats numbly, bile rising in his throat. “Dead?”

Alphinaud deflates. His shoulders slump. He stops walking. There’s a faint ringing in his ears and he wonders what good he thought steeling himself would do when he is weak enough that just hearing the truth stated makes him want to give up on everything, to run back to Sharlayan and pretend for a moment that this never happened.

Seike turns to look at him, then — really look, eyes narrowing as if she can see through to his very soul. It cannot be, he wants to say, breathing getting shallower by the minute. General Aldynn has always been an indestructible pillar of Ul’dah, unchanging and steadfast no matter what setbacks he faced but — the loss of an arm cannot be healed. A corpse cannot be brought back from the dead.

“Alphinaud.”

“Pray forgive me —“ The words come on a wisp of an exhale, something knotted and ugly making home of his chest. The magnitude of how presumptuous he has been is a blow landing with full force, one that sees him double over.

And yet it’s one that ultimately changes nothing; his insight comes too late and now something has been taken that can never be returned.

The anxiety roils within him. It tastes of nausea where it presses against the roof of his mouth, shocks where it razes along his skin like electrical pinpricks. His skin flushes with heat but in the next moment he’s freezing, vaguely aware of Seike kneeling down in front of him and grabbing hold of the front of his too-large, borrowed coat.

“Alphinaud.” This time her voice is sharper, cutting like a knife through the fog in his mind. He looks at her, stunned to find her form blurred and hazy through tears he didn’t realize were filling his eyes. “Listen to me.”

He nods wordlessly, desperate for anything that will distract him from the overwhelming everything that goes on in his body.

“What’s my name?”

Her question startles him enough that he responds without thinking. “Seike Crescent?”

“What’s the name of the fort we’re headed towards?”

“Camp Dragonhead…?”

She keeps asking questions of the same sort — asks him to name three arcanist spells, name something he can smell, what year he first summoned his carbuncle — and little by little, his breathing evens out. The anxiousness doesn’t dissipate as much as it gets manageable. Seike keeps him anchored throughout, her eyes steady on him.

“I won’t tell you that it’s not your fault.” The words sting and he recoils, as much as he knows it’s the truth. “But all of it is not yours to carry. Don’t forget that. Let’s keep going.”

“Right,” Alphinaud takes a deep breath and Seike looks like she approves, the slightest curve to her mouth.

“Another one, for the road.” She says, breathes in and out in sync with him — a kindness, he would much later come to look back on as building the foundation for their trust stronger than anything else.

The soft blue glow of the Camp Dragonhead aetheryte is just barely visible on the horizon when Alphinaud’s strength finally fails him and he stops to kneel, wheezing. Night has chased them this last stretch, leeching what little color and warmth there was to be found in the Coerthas snowscape.

Alphinaud hadn’t wanted to admit to struggling, but he simply wasn’t made to walk this far. In fact, he doesn’t think he has ever exerted himself like this physically before. While Seike hadn’t vocalized any demands of him, it had been clear from the set of her mouth and the way she carried herself that slowing down was no option and he was loath to disappoint her even further, even as he started to flag.

This, however, seems to be where his absolute limit is.

The snow lures him in, croons of warmth, rest, and he lists toward it, stopped only by a hard yank at his collar. Would he be permitted to take a moment, he wants to ask, though it feels like the words that leave him aren’t coming out quite the way they should.

From far away sounds thunder, coming closer and closer until it booms around him and reverberates through his body. Weakly, Alphinaud lifts his head to try and see the sky because he doesn’t remember any clouds on the way here — but it is still clear with stars shining bright.

“Young master Alphinaud, allow me.”

There’s a lurch and in the blink of an eye heaven becomes earth.

“He doesn’t hear you.”

Alphinaud is too busy with everything spinning to protest because he does hear, he thinks, he’s just very tired. There’s more thunder and the earth shakes as though rattled by an earthquake — he really ought to be more alarmed.

But it’s hard to be, when everything is so fuzzy at the edges. He’s moved somewhere, by someone and as he’s laid down on something flat and warm the shaking finally comes to an end.

As soon as Alphinaud shuts his eyes, he’s fast asleep, ignorant of the way Seike’s eyes soften as she watches Haurchefant pull heavy furs over his shoulders and of the hushed guilt in her voice when she speaks.

“I pushed him too far.”

“The mistake is just as much mine,” Haurchefant sighs. “I sent riders out to meet you, but I didn’t factor in how much time had already passed once I got word and they ran late. You pushed him as much as you had to.”

Alphinaud comes to find the following day that what he thought was thunder was simply Haurchefant’s men arriving on chocobos to relieve them. Lord Haurchefant himself has kept watch by Alphinaud’s bedside with a plate of breakfast foods that seem to have been mysteriously halved by the time Alphinaud wakes.

Seike spent the night in the capable hands of the chirurgeons, Haurchefant tells him — Alphinaud didn’t even know she was hurt.

And aside from the reunion with Tataru and Yugiri — who greets them both with subdued but genuine joy, there is no news regarding the rest of the Scions and with each passing hour it becomes increasingly clear that none will come.

Alphinaud, once settled, can’t move.

Seike, on the other hand, can’t stay still; she paces the hallways like a caged animal.

As Camp Dragonhead rises to shelter them, Alphinaud’s entire day is swallowed up by the indistinct buzz in his head, the hard wood of the chair beneath him, waiting, straining to hear the faint noises of a teleport spell through thick stone walls, waiting, regretting, ruminating, buzzing in his head.

He’s fed and provided with a spare set of clothes — but the food might as well be ashes in his mouth and although he can tell the clothes are of the finest wool, they are not nearly enough to dispel the chill from his bones.

Every once in a while he takes a deep breath like how Seike showed him, the air whistling past his teeth as he works to hold himself together.

He hears Haurchefant order his men to make ready in hushed tones and the bite in his mouth grows and grows. Would they too pay for this affiliation with limbs? Lives?

Even a pitiful attempt at giving voice to his emotions makes him feel worse as they all rush in to comfort him; all except Seike, who’s watching him with knitted brows from where she’s wearing grooves into the floor.

It settles in his stomach like a lump of lead, the knowledge that despite traveling by her side for this long he can’t read her at all. Is she mad? Disappointed? All of those things? He wouldn’t fault her for any of it.

And yet it feels — unfair. Unwarranted.

Aside from a quiet good morning she’s barely said a word to him — nor anyone else apart from Haurchefant, for that matter, but it feels more like a personal slight against him in particular. After all, she’s been like this ever since yesterday.

Alphinaud tries to swallow the sudden resentment he feels, the urge to say that he didn’t know. That she doesn’t have to look at him like that when he can feel the ramifications of his actions quite keenly on his own.

Even as the light outside grows dim and Camp Dragonhead prepares to go to sleep, there is still the faintest sliver of hope that someone will show up. Someone who can tell Alphinaud what to do, how to feel, where to begin — leaving Sharlayan had been the scariest thing he’d ever done, but the Scions he’d known since childhood had always been there.

Perhaps not always physically, maybe not at the forefront, but he’d known where to find his friends and mentors.

Seike is — he doesn’t know what Seike is to him, because he’s slowly coming to realize that he doesn’t know who she is to begin with outside primal slaying and questing. Not quite a friend, not quite a Scion.

An asset.

He shakes his head vigorously to dispel that ugly thought.

By the time the fire sputters and dies out, Yugiri has disappeared to try and send messages to the Doman’s still in Revenant’s Toll and Tataru has since long gone to sleep, exhausted after riding all night to get to them.

“No one’s coming.” Seike says, and that’s that.

“All other matters aside…” Haurchefant clears his throat. “I fear you will have to settle in here for the winter. If the aching knees and stiff joints I hear tales of have any truth to them, it will be a hard one. And with the recent happenings in Ishgard… I’m afraid it will remain closed to us for a while longer.”

And this night will last forever, Alphinaud bitterly thinks, and time will march on forward despite it.

They are shown their rooms, close by Haurchefant’s own. Seike seems to already know her way around and Alphinaud wonders at how easily she moves inside the room she’s assigned, tossing a small satchel on the made-up bed before rejoining them as though she’s done it a hundred times before.

“This is Emmanellain’s room, usually,” Haurchefant says when Alphinaud is brought to the one assigned for him. It’s luxurious in a way that stands out from the rest of Camp Dragonhead — fine curtains hang in front of the windows, there’s a crackling fire already going and in the corner a bathtub peeks out behind an elegant partition.

It fits with the little he knows of a younger brother Haurchefant had once described as ‘exuberant’ with an exasperated sort of fondness and while he is glad to be given such nice accommodations —

“Won’t I be in the way should he come visit?” Alphinaud asks, only to hear Seike huff.

“Ah,” Haurchefant ducks his head with a quiet laugh. “Not to worry, I am sure he won’t.”

There’s a flatness to Haurchefant’s voice as he says it that Alphinaud can’t pin down and combined with Seike’s initial reaction it feels like he’s missing something, frustration ballooning in his chest.

“Alphinaud —“ Seike must have seen something on him because she sounds concerned, hovering in the doorway with an unreadable expression.

As if any of her expressions are actually readable.

It’s another uncharitable thought and that annoys him even further, because honestly? What is wrong with him?

“No need, Seike,” Alphinaud cuts her off. His chest swells until it hurts and he is both himself and a spectator floating above like a ghost, weightless and dizzy. In the spill of moonlight he can see the tense line of Seike’s shoulders, the way Haurchefant’s hand hovers over the small of her back.

He watches his own fists clench and the way his face settles into a mask of calm.

“I will see you in the morning to discuss our plans moving forward.”

Clinical. Political. Emotionless in a way that makes Seike snap her mouth shut, her features darkening in an instant.

It unsettles him, though he does not know why and that in turn makes him withdraw even further into that same persona he’s grown so comfortable in, lips curling into a polite and unassuming smile.

“I bid you good night.”

She’s gone before he is finished speaking and the bubble bursts, sending him crashing back down to reality; reality where Haurchefant awaits him with a sad smile and a disappointed gleam in his eyes.

“You have both been through a lot. Is it not better for the two of you to lean on each other?”

Alphinaud doesn’t know what to say. Of course it would be better, but he hasn’t the slightest idea how.

“Feel free to seek me out at any time you need, young master Alphinaud. Sometimes it is good to have the opinion of a third party.”

The way he says it isn’t unkind but Alphinaud flinches all the same, gaze flicking down the hallway to see if he can catch Seike and somehow magically undo what he just did.

“I-I-I —“ Alphinaud stammers, and then quiets.

Haurchefant’s smile widens and grows brighter as he reaches out to ruffle Alphinaud’s hair.

All fight drains out of Alphinaud. The last dregs of adrenaline slowly dissipates with the gentle touch, leaving only bone-deep weariness and he stumbles under Haurchefant’s hand with a big yawn, making the Lord chuckle in response as he motions toward the room.

“I realize we are not that well acquainted — yet — so give it some thought. Remember, whenever you need me — after you’ve had your rest.”

Far later that night when he’s tossed and turned and twisted the bedding until it looks more like rope than proper blankets, Alphinaud thinks of the fact that Seike went to the chirurgeons in Camp Dragonhead alone, and he didn’t know.

It sticks like a thorn in his side. He didn’t know, and he sure didn’t ask either, instead he treated her like a simple —

She must hate him.

Warring with that, another thought rises — this one petulant and small-minded — can’t she see he’s already feeling guilty enough? Can’t she wait with her judgment?

The thoughts are eating at each other by the time Alphinaud slips into fitful sleep, where he dreams of severed arms and blue uniforms stained by blood and in the midst of it all, a warrior with black hair and a broad back, weeping loudly.

Chapter Text

For a brief, blissful moment upon waking Alphinaud basks in the warmth of the bed and stares up at the ceiling, blinking blearily in hopes that the dark cast over the room will lift soon. Ul’dah has had a few days of bad weather before, sure, but he is fairly certain it’s never been as dark as this. Did he draw the curtains last night for some reason? And why is it so much colder —

Between one breath and the next all the air is driven from his lungs.

Alphinaud barrels out of the bed and lands on all fours, every fiber of every muscle screaming in defiance as he retches all over the fine carpet beside his bed.

His bed in Camp Dragonhead, Coerthas.

The reasons he ended up here all crop up at once, insistent and clamoring for his attention; the helplessness, how cold a blade could feel against his throat, the sickening twinkle of mirth in Yuyuhase’s eyes once Alphinaud’s voice started to waver in questioning their motives. The cold wind against his face, Seike's back the only thing he could see for hours. The waiting.

Yesterday had felt like a waking dream; a foggy, unreal thing. Today, however, cements a stark reality.

Regaining his breath seems an insurmountable task. For every desperate sniffle in, he exerts double the force on every shuddering exhale out, until his head pounds violently and black spots dance at the edges of his vision. He doesn’t think he has ever felt sick like this before, the hack-jerk-cough making his battered body light up in pain.

There is no ticking of a chronometer to chronicle how long he spends like that; hunched over himself, arms wrapped tightly around his torso as he cries.

What was I thinking? What was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking at all.

Alphinaud inhales, coughing violently. He takes another breath, wiping at his mouth and wincing at the mess before allowing himself one last sniffle. With considerable effort he straightens all the way back up and mechanically begins to make ready, moving slowly about the room that he’ll be calling home for the foreseeable future.

Where does he even begin? Reflexively he lifts a hand to tap at his linkpearl, only to let it fall limp to his side as he remembers the futility; there is no one on the other end to answer. Alisaie would not risk being overheard and there’s a high chance whatever magic Urianger cast over the Waking Sands wouldn’t even let the signal through, and even if it did it was a risk. And the others —

This is getting me nowhere.

A chill tears through his body and he flicks his gaze to the dying embers in the fireplace. No one has been by to feed the fire and he decides to make that his first order of business. In the absence of firewood he spends several minutes stabbing into the dying flames with a poker — a futile exercise, as the charred logs crumbles under his clumsy attempt and promptly chokes out what little warmth was left.

Whenever Minfilia or Papalymo or Seike did it, it looked so easy. Rejuvenating a dying fire should hardly feel like the biggest gap in his skillset, but right now —

“Matron’s tits.” Alphinaud mutters, and though the words lay wrong in his mouth, it feels good to say them. “Seven hells. Thaliak’s behind. Twelves-damned. Cock.”

He stays crouched in front of the cooling hearth until his calves sting and his nose starts to run, trying and failing to keep the frustration at bay. There’s so much waiting for him outside this room that he imagines the door bulges inward from the weight of it, bending in the shape of a bow set to fire.

The Scions have been whittled down to nothing and despite his grand words yesterday he can’t even do this one simple thing right. Yet another declaration with no substance, as though change could be simply willed into existence.

But all of it is not yours to carry.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Alphinaud breathes deep, and makes for the hallway.

A soft-spoken soldier that happened to be stationed conveniently close — suspiciously so — shows him to the large dining area where Tataru greets him with a strained, yet genuine smile. There’s a sizable spread on the table in front of her and several pillows have been stacked in order to make her reach the table comfortably.

Perhaps the sight ought to have lifted his spirits but instead it only serves to make him more aware of everyone else’s absence. No dry comment from Thancred, no hidden smile from Y’shtola nor a hearty ‘can’t wait to dig in’ from Minfilia — his heart clenches and he must make a wonderful impression of a puppet that had its strings severed when he crashes into the chair next to Tataru.

“Oh, Alphinaud, please cheer up.” Tataru says, clasping one of his hands in both of hers. “You look so gloomy…”

“I’m sorry, Tataru,” he says dutifully, ducking his head so he can hide behind his fringe.

From underneath it his eyes dart around the room, making note of the men and women clad in Fortemps colors moving with quiet urgency he is more than familiar with after his time commanding the Crystal Braves. A shock of black hair in the corner of his eye makes him sit a little straighter — but the face underneath is not the one he expected (wanted? feared?) to see.

Tataru watches him for a while and then, gentle in the way only Tataru knows to be, she says: “Seike is outside, I think.”

“I see,” Alphinaud says, aiming for neutral and failing miserably at it judging by the look of pity Tataru gives him.

Is it not better for the two of you to lean on each other?

It is easy for Haurchefant to say that, but Alphinaud doesn’t know where to start, what thread to pull; Seike is not a state city leader that he can analyze until he finds an angle to work, nor is she a familiar Scion where he can draw from prior history or plain ask without fear of judgment.

Where Alphinaud dances in the nuance of politics and finery, Seike sticks to steel and earth. Where he looks ahead, she looks in front. She has traveled by his side for so long and yet, upon looking back, he wonders if they ever spoke the same language at all.

Perhaps he ought to stay and let her seek him out? Or should he go outside?

Tataru pats him on the arm and it makes him sink deeper into the chair and wish he was anywhere but here, that the ground would crack open and swallow him. It’s childish to be sure, but at the same time it feels good to indulge. He wonders how much Tataru and Yugiri know about his and Seike's journey to Camp Dragonhead. If they also blame him for being stuck in Coerthas like this.

An empty plate is pointedly sat in front of him, with Tataru nudging it until he acknowledges it with a tight smile.

After sitting with his indecisiveness a while the decision is made for him; an old Elezen with fiery red hair passes their table and summarily banishes him from the dining area as soon as it’s made clear that Alphinaud has no intention to eat nor drink. Even Tataru sides against him, brows knit together as she wonders out loud if the fresh air won’t do him good.

So he shuffles on the coat he had the foresight to bring along and steps outside, where the cold air strikes like a fist. It’s snowing, big soft flakes that melt as soon as they land on his skin and he hunches in the coat, squinting and scanning the grounds for Seike, unsure if he wants to find her or not.

Eventually he spots her atop one of the guard towers; a smudge of dark cutting through whirlwind white.

Getting to her turns out to be a project in its own right and he half fears that she’ll be gone by the time he’s done climbing narrow stairs and passing doors under the watchful eyes of guards that had clearly been ordered to let him roam and didn’t quite know what to make of it yet.

As time passes the fear only grows and when he gets lost yet again he feels tears claw sharp in his throat, rendering him unable to present even a simple thanks to the woman that finally steers him right.

But she’s still there once he pushes past the last set of doors and Alphinaud’s knees nearly buckle with relief.

“Seike!” He wheezes her name and it’s disheartening to see how she visibly collects herself before turning to him, face blank.

She inclines her head in greeting and oh, already Alphinaud can feel this going sideways.

“Full glad am I to see you up and about and well enough to climb towers! I heard from the good lord Haurchefant that you had a need for a visit to the chirurgeons when we arrived?”

His damnable mouth is ten yalms ahead of his brain, running on a script he for once in his life wishes he could switch off. The empty, trite quality of his words has never seemed so obscene, so obvious; Alphinaud notes the dark circles under Seike’s eyes and the tremble in her hands and wishes he could take them back.

Alisaie would know what to say if she were here, he thinks miserably. When it came to matters of the heart his sister always managed to cut to the core in one swift strike, something he'd long envied.

“Worry not, Alphinaud, I will be fit to fight before you know it,” Seike says.

“That’s— that’s good.”

And yet not at all the answer he sought.

Irritation blooms warm alongside a lingering sense of shame that he hasn’t been able to shake, manifesting in a heavy sigh before he can rein himself in. They stand together in silence for a long while, long enough that snow starts to pile up on his coat. Alphinaud's mouth works silently over practiced words and phrases, mind racing to salvage the situation as best he can.

Desperately he glances up at Seike, to try and get a read on her mood and through that find a frame to grip, to fill.

Something akin to curiosity glints in Seike’s eyes.

She seems — expectant. Alphinaud has seen it happen many times before, how her mere presence has made people crack open and talk like they had no choice but to do so. A few times when all other negotiations have failed, it is Seike crouching down and waiting patiently that have made someone open up and spill the information they seek.

Never would he have thought himself to be one of the people affected in that way, but it feels physically painful to try and keep his silence. It’s a strange kind of comfort, to just — let go.

“I know you must think me a fool, Seike, but I have no idea what to say to you.”

Alphinaud tugs the coat tighter around himself and swallows hard, trying to keep his lips from wobbling.

“I was trusted with power I was not mature enough to wield. I let this fester in the very heart of the Scions, and I have brought us to near ruination with my own… My own… Blindness! I thought myself a savior —“ this he spits, followed by a breath too short for the words that follow. “— come to Eorzea to try and make them see how simple it would be to fix all their problems. Hours upon hours of theory and reading, preparations and intellectual debates with both father and mother and it led to, to this! These consequences are so far beyond me, I don’t know where to start.”

And there is the crux of it all, laid bare. He doesn’t know. Knowing things is what he’s been good at his whole life and here he is, in the middle of a war-torn country, with not a single clue. Not even the skills he thought himself possess seem to avail him now and Seike, the only other person who could possibly understand, must surely despise him.

“There are people that have been hurt, Seike. I was too busy moving pawns on my chessboard to see what was happening right in front of me. I don’t know where to start. I…”

He trails off, loath to keep repeating himself.

Seike looks at him much in the same way she did the day before yesterday, steady and sure. He waits for an answer befitting the Warrior of Light, burgeoning hero of the realm and braces himself for good and righteous words he doesn’t want to hear.

“Do you mind?”

She has plucked a cigarette out of somewhere and Alphinaud blinks at it. He never knew she smoked, although it made sense — the habit had grown prominent among soldiers and adventurers of late, and Seike was both.

“I don’t mind?”

A grim, knife’s edge smile curves her lips and with a flick of her hand and a flash of orange she lights the cigarette, taking a long, slow drag.

“Come keep watch with me, for a start.”

Oh —

Alphinaud takes the space next to Seike and the vertigo is so strong he has to brace himself against the railing, because from here Seike has a clear view of both the Aetheryte and the gate facing the Shroud.

Where he looks ahead, she looks in front.

She’s been —

The Aetheryte spins silently underneath them for hours, until the snow subsides and the blue sky claws its way past heavy gray clouds — first a little, and then all at once.