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Granson tells her the story earlier than she expects him to.
Not that she didn’t have her suspicions from the very beginning. Between the sword and Cyella’s commentary, Arcelia had known the truth to be an inevitability if they were to continue working together.
(That, and the fact that during their first meeting he had made a point to remind her about the nature of Sin Eaters; that they’d been innocent people once before, that she shouldn’t let the truth of that deter her. That cutting them down would be doing them a favor.
Of course the truth of it drops like dead weight in her chest — familiar, an old wound reopening once again.)
“I couldn’t see her as anything else,” Granson tells her — emphatically, as if providing a justification meant more for himself than for anyone else. She listens quietly as he grinds out the words; catches the flex of his hand, the furrow of his brow. He tells her of love and loss and the dead before and the bitter after and Arcelia, her face carefully neutral, bites her tongue and lets him.
“For all that and more, I killed her,” he says, and means it.
She wonders how many other stories had ended the same, similar enough. She wonders for which ones the claymore presents itself as a means to an end. She wonders what makes them enough to stand apart.
She’s long since favored keeping her own story close to her chest.
Not that she can’t recite it easily at this point, the relevant facts almost standard given how many times she’s had to provide the explanation to one companion or another; to Sidurgu, to the Scions, to the Lord Commander and all the rest.
(Not to the High Houses, though. Certainly not the Dzemaels. Diplomat she may unwittingly be, she’d asserted that Aymeric had been voted into his position for a reason.)
(She sometimes wonders what had become of the belongings she had left behind at the Rook; if they had found the planisphere and returned it to Jannequinard, or simply had it burned with all the rest.
It doesn’t matter anyway. She isn’t going back.)
So, those who need to know, know. There isn’t much to be gained from dwelling on what she cannot change.
She has more than enough going on to keep herself occupied, anyway — always another threat, another target. Something to fight or something to fight for. Anything, everything, to keep herself out of her own head.
(Not that the shadow ever puts up with the pretense for long.)
Regardless — she keeps to herself, because it weighs as it should and there’s little to be done when the empty coffins have long since been buried in the dirt.
So.
So —
It’s just that —
He carries the sword.
He’s the third person she’s ever seen carrying a claymore.
Which is funny, considering — it had only taken her traveling a world away to find another. She thinks of Ishgard despite herself; how it had held those of her profession in contempt, even as it had knowingly housed three within its walls concurrently, between herself, Sidurgu, and of course —
(She’d always wondered if the Archimandrite ever had a shadow of his own. She’d never quite managed the nerve to ask him before — well.)
(Then again, she thinks to herself that if he did have one, it likely would have shown up at the Reactor. That perhaps there would have been less collective surprise when her own manifested, no hesitance at the sight of swirling darkness, at the mirror image made corporeal enough to strike. She likes to think so, anyway; something the tempering perhaps couldn’t touch, some recess of his mind that wasn’t tarnished.
So, no. Either he’d never had his own, or it had died alongside the rest of his will.)
“It’s just a sword,” Granson tells her once, not unkindly.
Right, she thinks. Sure.
“I guess I’m just surprised,” she says. “It is quite rare to see.”
“Is it?”
“Is it not? They carry quite the reputation where I come from. Few are willing to shoulder the burden.”
Granson just looks at her, cocking an eyebrow as if she’d just said the most peculiar thing in the world. She’d blush in embarrassment if she were any less sure of herself.
“In my experience,” he finally says, borderline wry, “people concern themselves less with the weapon itself and more with whether it’s any good at keeping them alive.”
“And so you chose the claymore.”
He inclines his head pointedly. “So did you.”
Yes, she thinks wearily. And not without reason.
It comes up again later because she can’t help herself she wants to know she has to —
“It really is a rare profession where I’m from, is all.” Her fingers curl in her skirts as she follows after him, twigs snapping noisily beneath her boots in the dry dirt.
His huff carries over his shoulder, past the hilt of the greatsword strapped to his back.
“Is that so?”
She nods, resolute. “The path of the paladin is far more popular — or at the very least, those who favor a shield alongside their sword.”
“I see,” he says, kind enough to humor her.
“Even the gunblade is less rare to see,” she goes on with a wide sweep of her arm, mimicking the swing of the weapon in her hand, thinking of how Thancred had taught her before, “and certainly the — axe.”
She stumbles through the thought, the unintentionally unearthed memory as she falters in her next step — abruptly enough that Granson pauses in turn.
“…Is something amiss?”
Arcelia blinks. He tries again.
“Sinner.”
He draws closer. She shakes her head.
(You know more axe wielders than him, she reminds herself — the shadow reminds her, an insistent tug on her soul. Her brow furrows. Her heart thunders mutinously in her chest. He wasn’t even a warrior, not really —)
She blots out the thought and drops the subject even as she continues to turn the crux of it over in her mind. The shadow lets her ruminate, lets her think herself in circles for a solid malm before she hears the telltale sigh, a scoff that isn’t really there.
It’s not really a surprise, is it? The sword came to you when you needed it, too.
She’s not going to preach to a man grieving the loss of his beloved wife. The scars, the sword — it was all for Milinda.
Arcelia wants to say that she understands, but as she sits and considers, it strikes her all at once that maybe she doesn’t. Couldn’t, inherently, the differences between them becoming more and more glaringly evident the longer she stares down into her mug. Granson had loved Milinda — they had been married, happy together; they had shared a life and a dream for their shared future. Of course it was heartbreaking to have it all brutally ripped away.
Meanwhile —
Well.
She realizes that at this point, she’s known them as dead longer than she ever knew them alive.
She clears her throat.
(Not that there hadn’t been confessions, she supposes — glimpses of them at least, still subtle and soft and true.
Then again, Milinda had known that Granson loved her long before he’d driven a blade through her heart.)
He understands, though.
Not that the others don’t, of course, in their own ways. It’s not like grief is a rare commodity. It wasn’t on the Source, and it certainly isn’t on the First.
But he understands in a way that few others do; what it means to look into the eyes of someone you love, to understand that they’re already gone — to raise the sword yourself to end it.
Mercy. He’d said the word like he should spit it, like it stung as it rolled off the tongue.
Arcelia swallows hard.
A bead of sweat rolls down the curve of her spine as she stares furtively down at the empty glass in front of her. Her nails rap once against the bar top haltingly, fidgeting until she minds herself enough to stop.
It’s been a long day. She deserves a break — they both do, after the long, hot trek back to Amh Areng. The ale is refreshingly cold in stark contrast to the arid remnants of the day. Warmth stirs in her breast, spreads from her chest out to her limbs as she leans back in her chair, hums. It should be a welcome distraction, the drink serving its purpose as a dampener, an indulgence that somewhat muffles the light currently ripping its way through the fibers of her being.
The admittedly larger distraction sets his own empty mug back down with a thunk, inclining his head toward the barkeep.
“Another?”
It takes her a moment to realize he’s asking her — offering. Arcelia casts a sidelong glance at Granson, considers. There’s a faint flush that’s spreading over the curve of his cheek, out to his ears. A result of the alcohol, to be sure. Impossible to suggest otherwise when his expression remains as intent as ever. Still, she feels the tension ebb from her shoulders a modicum more, as he reminds, “Remember — we’re celebrating.”
She nods. He orders.
It’s all she needs for her curiosity to get the better of her.
She presents her job stone, plucking it from her satchel and placing it neatly in the space between their glasses.
“Do you have one?” she asks, nudging him.
His gaze slides from the stone, to her hand, to her face proper.
“…Naturally.”
Her bottom lip wobbles as he procures it, setting it next to hers — the same sigil, the same shape. A little scuffed across the face, well worn and well used, but unmistakable, whole.
(Not that her own bore even so much as a crack, no evidence left from her little incident back in Ala Mhigo.)
Still.
It still takes her another day and twice as many drinks to muster the courage to ask him about the shadow.
“I don’t know of anyone else with one,” she goes on, heart thudding in her chest. The small laugh she offers comes out more nervous than light-hearted.
He cocks an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“It’s like —” She pauses as she scrapes together the explanation, delving through to find the right words. She feels the gentle press against her mind — realizes it’s curious to see what she might say, as if it doesn’t already know, because —
“It’s a part of you,” she says, hand to her chest. “An extension of you. A manifestation of — emotion, I guess. Your will, your wants, in purest form.”
There’s a distant trickle of satisfaction, something other, almost outside her body but still inherently hers. A tinge smug, a tinge resentful when she tacks on plainly, “For better or worse.”
You can’t be offended, she snarks to the shadow. It’s the truth.
If she listens close, she can hear the distant sigh, a hand on the hip of something argumentative for the sake of being so. She ignores it.
Granson hums in contemplation, setting his ale down with a thunk against the bartop. “I don’t think so, then,” he says. “I feel like I’d know if that ever happened, and it hasn’t so far.”
“Ah.” She shrugs off her disappointment and offers a small smile. “It was worth an ask, anyway.”
He regards her again to the point where she wonders if he thinks she’s lying, or mad — heretical, even, before she reminds herself that he’s never cared about that. Instead she watches as he grins back at her, as he leans back further in his chair. “It sure sounds interesting at any rate. Show me sometime.”
In the back of her mind she feels it — a smile full of promise, full of teeth. A tail that flicks where hers stays still, a flex of a hand as it wraps eagerly around the hilt of a sword.
I like this one.
Arcelia wonders if it’s her that actually notices, or if it’s her who points it out.
One moment she’s trudging on beside him, blinking at the first few blooms squashed beneath her heel, a precursor to the inevitable flower fields that blanket the hills of the fae realm. The next, she’s looking up, looking at him — notes the hesitation in his expression, the flickers of uncertainty that came naturally to those who had only heard the stories out of Il Mheg. Moreso, she finds herself distracted, all the more baffling because it’s by things she already knew to exist — the gleaming red of his eyes, the sharp curve of his jaw. The press of his mouth as he looks at her, as he watches her watch him, as she blinks in sudden, stifling embarrassment.
“Is something amiss?” he asks. He’s genuinely concerned, because of course he is.
Her cheeks color. She shakes her head.
“No.”
She can’t, she won’t, she —
Can’t.
He calls her Sinner. It’s a different sort of nickname. It’s honest. It’s something she can appreciate.
(At the back of her mind, the shadow sighs, annoyed and unimpressed.
You still miss the other ones more.)
She does tell him the story eventually. Fair’s fair, and it only seemed natural given the revelation imparted by Sul Oul, how it had sent the man stumbling off to gather his thoughts.
Granson regards her in silence for a moment, after, broken up by the communal din of the Nu Mou, the distant fauna snuffling about through the flower fields, the rhythmic tap of his fingers against his arm.
“So you did get your revenge, in the end,” he says, finally.
Arcelia smoothes her skirts and purses her lips.
“That’s one way to look at it,” she allows. “I can’t pretend to not be happy that he’s dead.”
There’s another long pause. The feeling roils in her chest, threatening to spill out between the gaps in her ribs, blackening her fingertips, the wound in her heart festering all over again. It still somehow shocks her when it happens, even though she knows grief is just like that — quick and brutal when it wants to be, the hand held gently in hers until it becomes the hand at her throat instead.
She wants to tell Granson that it’s all similar, but it isn’t the same — not really, not in the way she’d initially thought. That she really was like Branden, more than Sul Oul could possibly know; that she had hesitated once, too, with a bowstring held taut the first time, a claymore clenched in trembling hands the second.
(Fool. You’re still like him too, the shadow reminds as she regards her companion. You know what it’s like to let hatred swallow you up and hollow you out. A sardonic sneer — And all the good it’s done you.
Thordan deserved to die. He had to, regardless of how I felt.
Granson sighs. He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes shut, before his hand falls away.
An ever-convenient crutch. Now help set him right.)
So she does, and keeps the rest to herself.
(The rest being:
Thordan has been dead for nearly two winters now. It still doesn’t change anything.
It doesn’t bring them back.)