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"I can scarcely think of anyone who might be able to understand her position other than you," Y'shtola told him as she labored over her the sickened girl, blinded eyes flashing him with a look filled with knowing that prickled over his spine as surely as if she'd dragged her nails across the nape of his neck.
She was not wrong, even if he wished it otherwise.
Sphene was a far cry from the simulacrum that had vexed them so. The Endless Sphene, so they'd decreed her, always gave him the sense that he could see through her if he'd just looked at her from the correct direction, that the hologram would shift and blur and he would see the electrope cybernetics beneath the veneer of flesh and blood, circuitry where a circulatory system ought to be, an empty metal chassis where the facsimile of a heart pretended at work.
G’raha watched her chest rise and fall with the labor of breath, then watched what little color was left drain from her cheeks as the Vow of Resolve tried to coaxingly inform her of her people’s untimely fate. For entire bells they spoke with the queen, piecing together the entirety of four hundred years' of history at her behest, and in the lulls of conversation, when Sphene pressed her face into her thin hands and her shoulders trembled with that terrible, familiar anguish—
The Scions looked to him, as if he were a scholar on the subject of chronological displacement and grief, as if she were some Third Era Allagan tomestone and not a living, breathing girl whose cries pierce his heart straight through.
He cannot help but admire her quiet dignity in the face of so much anguish. He had done little more than bar and seal the doors to the Crystal Tower as he raged and screamed in the face of a truth so long dead its grave had become overgrown, turning aside the descendants of Ironworks howling, go home and leave me to rot. Sphene takes the death of Otis and Zelenia with little else but a trembling little sob, Wuk Lamat bowing down low to drape a massive hand over her frail shoulders, beseeching and infinitely gentle. He could hear a soothing purr emerging from her throat as she holds the queen together.
"I can scarcely imagine what she is going through," Alisaie muttered under her breath, concealed behind white knuckles pressed to her lips. Her eyes darted in his direction, and he refused to meet them.
In truth, for years the only other being he'd known who could comprehend the enormity of the weight of eternity had been the Ascian Emet-Selch, he who created an entirety city in the memory of a civilization long dead and split asunder, who was put to the sword as surely as the other three Unsundered by the Warrior of Light. But nothing close to amity ever blossomed in those quiet hours wiled away in the Oculus, only a terse understanding that they were here for the Warrior of Light, and nothing more.
He expected the Warrior to make some comment—they understood like no one else all that he'd sacrificed in their name. There had ever been a strangeness betwixt them, since his untimely resurrection, as if they had only ever indulged the Crystal Exarch's fondness so as to delay him from seeking an untimely demise in the form of a heroic sacrifice, and now such pretenses had been cast aside. He was under no misapprehension that his will to live must be found elsewhere, and he was pleased to say he had, no matter how comforting the whispers of the dead. The sting of rejection, however well intentioned, aches all the same.
Of course he could not behold their brilliance. Of course the light of that blazing incandescence would never reach his cold, isolated moon. All his actions, all his devotion had never been dependent upon their reciprocation.
It almost does not even hurt anymore.
Sphene bears herself hooded and muted throughout her kingdom; he wonders if his subterfuge had been this obvious to the Warrior of Light. But while the Endless Sphene was possessed of an artificial radiance one could scarcely turn from, the real Sphene, flesh and blood after four hundred years of stasis, is quiet, diminished, almost washed-out as she sits by the bar in the Neon Stein, tapping her nails across the plexglass and staring at the screen overhead. It flashes images of the Arcadion and the Warrior of Light's ascent through the cruiserweight tier.
He'd gone to watch one of their bouts in secret with Alisaie, like two addicts indulging in their vice.
She'd made him swear on his life not to tell anyone, least of all Alphinaud. "I was supposed to be done with all this," she'd muttered disconsolately into her popcorn, and he knew precisely what she meant—how it felt to nurse a hopeless, unreciprocated love, for the sheer indulgence of pain it brought each time you saw them in all their scintillating glory. If nothing else, their struggle against the Brute Bomber made for a thrilling spectacle, the way they careened across the arena, the flashes of conflict so fast and brutal he only noticed the minutia of movement through the announcer’s play-by-play. They did not speak of the exhibitionist thrill, but Alisaie clutched his hand when the Warrior emerged, bloody and grinning, and he would bear in secret the way they’d chanted their name like so many of their admirers.
He and Alphinaud had been on rotating shifts throughout the city for the last week. He is eager to return to his bunk as he enters the Neon Stein, staff tucked over his shoulder, worn down and exhausted after another sixteen bell shift. To be a Scion of the Seventh Dawn—in whatever capacity it meant anymore—was to assuage the commonfolk, to be a steady rock for people to cleave to in a crisis, to heal, to dispense advice—all the skills he'd honed so carefully as the Crystal Exarch applied here and wherever else the Warrior of Light’s adventures took them. For whatever subconscious reason, more than even the attack on Radz-at-han, he found that part of him—whatever sediment of his soul too crystallized to be entirely dissolved by himself—rising to the surface here in this sunless city of electrope.
He feels one hundred years old all over again as Sphene raises her hand, hailing him over, and gently asks, "Are you finished with your patrol?"
G’raha feels caught out. In truth, he’d been trying to slink away into the backroom without her noticing, worn too thin to have a difficult conversation just at this moment. "I have. The hour is passing late." He hastily swallows the addendum of your grace. For her humble raiment, she is still the rightful queen of this city. Like any primal, the people still prayed to her for life without end.
"Yes," she agrees, "though I find I struggle to sleep these days—as if I have had my fill and can take no more."
Her eyes are the green of newly opened spring buds as they slide across his, pinning him in place.
He becomes terribly aware that he is the only other person alive on Etheirys who could possibly understand this particular strain of insomnia.
He swallows his pride, his misplaced ardor, the bloodsoaked memories of her predecessor, and settles down at her right-hand side, summoning a genuine smile.
"I always find a good meal and a strong drink go a long way to helping me find my way to sleep again," he tells her.
Sphene clasps her hands together, pleased at his acquiescence. "And what do you recommend?"
He guides her away from the synthetic proteins and towards a newer meal on the menu, mesquite soup, an addition from Tuliyollal. G'raha had never found himself predisposed to indulging in alcohol—he found himself preternaturally disposed to horrific hangovers—but Sphene points out a promising looking cocktail and requests one for each of them.
They watch as the bartender chips perfectly clear ice off of a massive block, pouring various colored liquors into a metal canister, sealing it, and shaking it with deft, precise movements before popping it open with a little carbonized hiss before pouring liquor the color of stormclouds into two frost-rimed glasses, swirling with shimmer. He garnishes each with a single tart cherry before setting them neatly before them on a coaster. Sphene claps her hands in delight. "Thank you!" she enthuses. The bartender smiles; he, too, was a member of Oblivion, and puts on a good show of ignoring the queen apparent.
When she clutches her hands like that, with that expression of uplifted delight, he can feel the low pull in his gut, memories of the way the Endless Sphene had plied them with promises and sweetness in exchange for their help. Sphene’s joy is guileless; it makes the Endless Sphene's manipulation even more rancid, to turn such unalloyed happiness into a thing of subterfuge. The artificial intelligence had recreated her facial expressions with complete faithfulness.
She delicately takes a sip; he finds himself watching very closely for her reaction. Her short eyebrows furrow, then draw up, her nose wrinkling. "’Tis very strong stuff," she gasps out, "but well worth the burn."
Though the neon lights of Solution Nine have a way of washing out any color, he swears he can see a flush high in her cheeks. She spoons soup into her mouth, daubing at the corners of her lips with the proffered napkin like a proper lady. "Forgive my impudence," Sphene says, "but when you speak of my condition—you sound as if... it's something you have some familiarity with. I am given to understand your order—the Scions of the Seventh Dawn—have been at the forefront of numerous conflicts on the Source. Is this something you've... seen before?" Her voice becomes small and tremulous.
Very few outside of their inner circle knew the whole truth of his ordeal. He preferred it as such—it made it much easier to push away the weight of centuries and let his mind effortlessly slide into the young man he now was, to fully embody himself rather than the phantom aches and pains of a much older, partially necrotized body.
She does not need to know his tale. But for whatever reason, he feels compelled to impress upon her the shocking similarities of their circumstances; he opens his mouth to begin, then closes it, finding himself struggling to find the very first thread in the vast tapestry he and the Warrior of Light had woven around one another.
"In Eorzea, there exists a tower," he finally manages, "from an ancient civilization, long dead. I found this tower, and... found myself a lost heir of their peoples, with the ability to utilize it. Their will—the ancient's will—was for the tower to be a beacon of hope for mankind. So I sealed it, and myself, away so that only an Eorzea of the future could utilize it."
She takes a sip of her drink, licking her pink lips for a moment before setting it down on the metal coaster again. "And what happened, when you woke into that future?"
G’raha’s smile is grim. "Our order had been murdered, all hope extinguished, mankind lost in the dark. I do not know what became of your Alexandria or Tural; doubtless the Endless Sphene's conquest went on unimpeded, or she found no such life to take. In that moment, when I woke, all I knew was that the Warrior of Light had been murdered. The order that still existed sent me to another shard—that of the First--—to correct an imbalance of Light." G'raha takes the glass and lifts it to his mouth, savoring the aromatic taste, the herbaceous sting in the back of his throat. "I arrived one hundred years too early."
Her soft mouth forms a small oh of surprise.
"You may revile what your counterpart did," G'raha finds himself saying, perhaps his tongue loosened by the alcohol, this strange land from the future, Sphene’s quiet noble beauty, or his well-worn, well-loved heartache, "but if the choice had been mine to make, I am not too proud to say I would have done as much to save my people."
"And did you save them?" she blurts. It is unabashedly desperate.
"In the end,” G’raha says, “yes. With the Warrior of Light’s help—with the help of the Scions—with the help of nearly every kindly soul that resides upon the First—yes.” When her eyes lighten, he adds, in a wash of bitterness and grief, “but I remember well all those that did not live to see the night sky returned to them."
Sphene stares into the shimmering whorls of her half-drunk glass, a trickle of condensation dripping down the fluted stem, as if she were trying to peer into a future rewritten, or a past undone.
"Forgive me," he blurts, suddenly taken aback with the hot flush of embarrassment, recalling himself, her station, "I did not mean to…’twas overly familiar of me to—"
"It can be done," Sphene whispers. "Though our circumstances are different—though we were on entirely different reflections—this thing can be done. My people can be saved, without the needless expense of souls." She sighs, her fingers splaying across the plexglass bartop. "Your words are more reassuring than I can possibly express, G’raha Tia of the First."
He had only ever thought of the Source as his home, but was there not a little truth in her misapprehension?
There is something freeing to be understood and seen by someone who had only just met him. Not of the Scions, who'd watched him fumble his way to their salvation, not of the Warrior of Light, who none-too-long ago had known that boy in the Syrcus Trench, but as he was now. When their eyes meet, she does not look away, but smiles, crinkling the corners of those evergreen eyes.
He notices then, the dark shadows beneath, the pink and shining callouses across her fingers from long hours of writing. They are markings he associates with the Archons. She must have found her grimoire in the derelict libraries of the Everkeep. He, Y'shtola, and herself had gone down to those depths, the uncomfortable ghosts of an era long-dead pressing against him as he scanned the tomes for any uncovered secrets to interdimensional fusion or Calyx's plans.
"I take it you are studying magicks again?" G'raha asks.
Sphene's eyes flicker down to her ink-stained fingers. "I have to. I can afford frailty no longer, no matter the status of my successor." There is ancient anger there that surprises him. Even he finds himself buying into the Endless Sphene's playacting, of a perfectly beautiful queen, effervescent and ever-lovely. The evidence of hardwork and mortality smooth away any lingering alienation between them.
He has ever been a fool for diligence and brilliance, and so G'raha Tia finds himself saying, without much thought, "I may be able to be of some assistance in that endeavor."
She glances at his staff, as if reevaluating him, then she nods. "If you have time to spare after your shifts. Forgive me, for you are half-dead on your feet."
Even now, an entire two years' time since he'd been roused in the Crystal Tower, he scarcely had more than five bells of sleep a night. G'raha bows his head. "It would be my pleasure to tutor you."
Sphene takes another drink, her pale throat working as she swallows the remainder of the stormcloud drink. G'raha cannot help but watch her, finding himself strangely mesmerized by the movement. As if it were all proof that she was real, and no artificial simulacrum of flesh and blood. He resists the impulse to reach out and touch her to assure himself that there was heat there. Then, she yawns widely behind her hand.
"You were right after all," Sphene sighs. "I am terribly drowsy now. I think I might even be able to find sleep, so long as I push aetheric equations out of my mind for the moment." She pushes her glass and finished bowl of soup to the edge of the bar, setting the used napkin neatly to the side, and stands. The warm, dry air from the ventilation pushes past him, and beyond the smell of new clothing and soap, she smells very faintly of flowers.
She rests her hand on his shoulder. Even through the fabric, he can feel how very warm and vibrant she is. "Thank you," she sighs. "For the camaraderie. It... means more than I can possibly express."
G'raha lifts his glass to her. She clinks hers against his, a ghost of a smile on her lips. "To futures unwritten," he toasts, and lets the liquor burn down his throat.
For the very first time, when G'raha Tia finally tucks himself into his bunk, he is not thinking of the Warrior of Light.
He finds himself thinking of Sphene's sad little smile, and if it were possible to give those eyes the spark of hope again.