Chapter Text
Estinien Varlineau was no stranger to death, nor the many ways it could be delivered by his hand. He was good at it — efficient. Honed like a blade at too young of an age, sharpened by an all-encompassing thirst for vengeance that quickly replaced any grief, any loss. Life had been cruel to him that way, and for a time, all that kept him breathing was the determination to watch it all burn. To sear away the evidence of his failures, and scatter the remains of his war-torn soul like so many ashes.
Perhaps he had never had a heart. Not one that bled easily, anyway. And perhaps that's why he found himself drawn to one so broken.
So lost and so fragile, so beautifully shattered, Nara was everything he could have been before dragon fire stole his innocence. Her sorrows didn't shame him — they took the air out of his lungs, turned his stomach heavy and cold with a longing to put the pieces back together, not because she was pathetic or pitiful, but because her grief was real and utterly unyielding.
Much like his own, when rage could no longer fuel it.
They'd met only once before she and the rest of the Scions had been pulled to the First, and to this day, he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd taken it for granted. She had still been so bright. Still so full of light, the flecks of gold in her eyes flashing with defiance as they exchanged harmless barbs. He had never felt so at ease, so immediately drawn into another person — so damned curious.
"At least I don't need to wear a mountain of metal to look intimidating."
"Or anything at all, for that matter."
"Are you flirting with me?"
He'd told her he wouldn't have dared, but the truth was, she'd captivated him from the start. There had been no deeper feelings then, at least none he'd been familiar with enough to recognize, but there had been a spark. A small one — fleeting — easily pushed to the back of his mind were it never to be kindled.
Acknowledging that this stranger felt so inevitable, that Nara might one day make his pulse race, and that meeting her was as necessary as water and warmth and oxygen was an epiphany reserved for another time. One that Estinien could have predicted, perhaps, but never have anticipated.
He didn't get the chance to meet her again — that Nara didn't come back from the First.
The one who did made herself scarce, and he wasn't oblivious to the way the other Scions regarded her with pained smiles and forced sympathy. Even as he was briefed on their exploits, though he knew nothing of her movements firsthand, there was a pervasive sense that her struggles were a deeply private affair, not to be touched for fear of worsening things, like sifting through a body still breathing.
Estinien couldn't explain the feeling that overwhelmed him the moment his eyes landed upon her when she returned — some unnamable kinship so sudden and powerful that his heart beat steady for what felt like the very first time. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing a shadow of his former self, the one who'd been struck with the knowledge that he'd lost everything he'd ever loved and had been helpless to prevent it. Only her grief hadn't been turned into fury. It was a sadness that had nowhere to go, clinging to her like a burial shroud, drowning out all that had once been vibrant.
All at once, he felt a strange, unfamiliar ache in his chest. A visceral need to protect her, to slay her demons with his bare hands. Her closest friends hesitated at the edges, too afraid to intrude upon the new emptiness, but he knew that void well — he'd spent his life seeking vengeance for it.
He didn't know what to do with it, how to interpret the part of him that suddenly insisted he'd rather end his days in misery than know she had succumbed to any.
No sooner had the realization taken hold than the threat of the Final Days began to loom in earnest, and both of them were called to duty once more. He had barely a week to orbit around her before the Scions were due in Sharlayan and within those few, precious days, he only saw her slip once, when the others had looked away and left her alone in her sorrow.
In the hallway outside her room, there had been no one to tell her it would be all right, or to whisper reminders to breathe in her ear — just Estinien, his face rough and uncertain, ready to fight for her but hopeless at anything else.
"Nara..."
It was the beginning of something, but he didn't know what. All he truly had to rely upon were his instincts, and none of them had been honed for the company of others. But they did tell him one thing:
If they made it through the days to come, this — whatever this was — could become home.
"Will you stay here?
... I don't want to be alone."
How does one forge a bond with another soul when they're granted no time to find common ground save for trauma, and awarded so little in shared experience beyond loss? There weren't any words for the way they leaned upon each other so naturally, no questions asked, no formalities spared. Perhaps it was something in the way she never judged him, or demanded anything from him beyond his presence — a space next to her, quiet company, and the certainty that he was expected nowhere else.
"Of course."