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SPRING
“Would you like to hold her?”
Ameliance Leveilleur is the most beautiful woman Thancred has ever met, and if he was still a crude-mouthed wharf-rat he would pass over her purse on sheer admiration. He is no thief, though. Not anymore. He is a man under intense scrutiny. He is a ward, not a son, not a brother, certainly not an uncle, and he is expected to act like it.
He looks at the soft bundle in her arms, then to her, and shakes his head.
It’s the right answer. Fourchenault is watching him. Fourchenault is always watching him. Thancred has learned how to behave. Thancred has straightened his syllables to the posh accent of Sharlayan but more so than that he has learned when to shut his mouth and duck his eyeline and mind his damned business.
“Her name is Alisaie,” Ameliance tells him, still holding the tiny thing with a maternal warmth in her voice that Thancred has never known. The other one of them, the boy, is tucked in Louisoix’s proud, cradling arms. Around them, a party buzzes. This is the twins’ first introduction to high society. Thancred is certain they’ll go far.
Thancred dares a closer look. He heard his fair share of newborn bastards crying from the backs of whorehouses as a child but he has never seen anything quite as pristine nor delicate as the baby Elezen presented before him. She has wispy, silver-white hair and bright blue eyes. Her cheeks are round and full and flushed with life. She arrived second, he heard, though she appears to be the more alive of the two—looking out at him as if she sees him, actually sees him, and isn’t just staring back at a smear of color forming a world she cannot yet comprehend.
“She’s beautiful,” he mumbles out, politely, and Ameliance beams brighter than she had during any of the various fawnings of her distinguished party guests. Thancred isn’t sure why. He’s become more sure of himself as he’s learned to walk amongst the rich and the educated, but his opinions on newborns were unfounded and unworthy of reaction.
“Will you look out for her and her brother,” Ameliance asks, “if anything were to happen?”
She says it so sweetly it takes Thancred a moment to process her words. He stands upright.
“I’m sure nothing will—“ His tongue catches in his mouth. “And even if something did—they have godparents, don’t they?”
“That isn’t what I asked of you.”
They share a charged look that absolutely baffles Thancred’s sense of etiquette, his mind scrambling through learned social niceties that have not prepared him for whatever this woman is requesting of him.
He looks down at the bundle, again. The sweet face. The bright eyes. The wide, sharp ears too large for their frame. The warmth of a blanket and a mother and a father and a massive house with a bank vault to match. A hearth to keep her warm. An elder brother to protect her. The twin children will live a life of luxury. They will not sleep with one eye open and they will not be subject to constant, endless danger. They will be fed and tutored and mentored and cherished. They do not need him. They will not, ever, need him. He knows they won’t.
And yet, the little girl before him looks so fragile. One slip of her mother’s arms and she would shatter against the floor. It’s a macabre thought—but suddenly every dull dinner knife and blunt walking cane and fake, jealous smile around him was a vicious threat. Every unknown sharp-toothed guest in the massive parlor, a potential aggressor. Every breath, Alisaie's potential last.
“Thancred,” Ameliance prompts.
“—I’ll kill for her,” he blurts out.
This catches the young mother by surprise.
“What?” she says, with a shocked half-laugh.
“For both of them,” Thancred corrects, not looking up at her. “Whatever they need. Whoever crosses them. I’ll do it.”
He doesn’t know what else to tell her. It’s all he can offer. He doesn’t have money, or power, or any education beyond the remedial. He can’t pay back the resources her father-in-law has funneled into him. He can’t provide, he can’t protect, but he can wield a blade if push ever came to desperate shove. Violence runs in his veins—Fourchenault won’t let him forget it. But he can do this, for them. He can do this, for her.
Ameliance’s face softens. “You’re sweet,” she says, though she still sounds somewhat shocked, “but all I ask is that you be there for them, if we ever can’t be. Can you do that, Thancred?”
Instead of answering, he asks, “Can I hold her, actually?”
Ameliance hesitates, then offers the bundle to him. Says, “Of course.” Thancred feels Fourchenault’s eyes on him. He doesn’t care. A living, precious thing is held aloft in his arms. A perfect, tiny being stares up at him.
He knows, implicitly, that he will do whatever is required to keep his promise.
SUMMER
“Are you my daddy?” Alisaie asks.
Thancred is slung over his desk like a man possessed, his research scattered in stacks of parchment and books around him. He is twenty-three. She is seven, but she looks younger. Elezen years are strange like that. He was running the underplanks barefoot at her age. She is in school, now, as is the Sharlayan way, but she looks barely more than a toddler.
“What?” he says, before even looking over at her. He squints, as if that might help him process the question. He may have misheard it. He’s been stressed. He’s been losing touch with the base instincts he once so proudly flaunted. He has his Mark, now, and has asked to attend Studium lectures on his leave simply to justify its existence.
She asks, again: “Are you my daddy?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head swiftly, “no, I’m absolutely not—who told you that?”
“Alphinaud’s friend,” Alisaie says, “at school.”
An icy feeling trails down Thancred’s blood but he does not betray it in his expression. He proffers the young lady of the house a quirked smile. He nods in assurance at her. “Your daddy’s your daddy,” he states. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“He told Alphinaud that you kissed Mama.”
Thancred’s smile flinches. Alisaie notices, and latches on. “—He said my father doesn’t know. But you know, don’t you? He said he overheard his mother telling a friend that you knew!”
Thancred is not having this conversation. Thancred has work to do, and she has parents who can set her back on path. It is not his place to assure this child that her father was not, in fact, a cuckold, and that her playground friend may, in fact, be an arsehole. It is not his fucking job.
“I’m not your father,” he says. “You need to talk to your mother about this.”
“He said I have siblings! Lots of them!”
“I don’t have—“ Thancred can feel himself growing frustrated. “I don’t have any kids, including you and your brother.”
It sounds as if her heart breaks a little when she replies, “I want to meet them.”
He doesn’t know what else to say to her. He doesn’t know what to do with children. He was smarter than this, at her age. Maybe it was some schism in development between Hyur and Elezen. Maybe it was just necessity. He knew how conception worked when he was seven. He knew how babies mimicked their parents. He knew what a bastard looked like—a real one, the kind of birth spoken of in hushed voices, the features on the child some mottled mix between their parents’ differing races. She can look in a mirror, if she was so curious. He has never seen such a nobleblooded Sharlayan Elezen in his life.
“Your friend was being mean,” he says, at last. “It’s mean to say someone’s father isn’t their father.” He hesitates, and then adds, “It’s called rumormongering. And only rats do it.”
It takes Alisaie a moment to process this. It is clear that she was unaware that her and her brother may have been being bullied.
She is quiet for a long stretch, a rarity for her. Thancred lets her think it through.
Then, she shoots up. “That rat,” she exclaims, and he’s happy that she has at last put the pieces together. Maybe she’ll leave him alone now. “I’m—I’ll—I’ll punch him!”
“Words work better,” Thancred says, chiding, looking back to his research. “That’s what your grandsire would say, at least.”
“I’ll yell at him, then!”
“Keep it cordial,” Thancred says, absently. “Explain to others that he’s stirring trouble. Turn them against him. You’ll get further that way.”
It’s quiet. Thancred doesn’t look at her, but he can feel her eyes on him. She’s waiting for him to continue. She wants to know what to do, how he would handle it. She has come to him for truths and she will not leave until she gets them.
“…Let him know you won’t take it anymore,” Thancred adds, slowly. Carefully. “Bring your brother. Let him do the talking. If the kid escalates, you can escalate, just—“ Thancred isn’t reading the book in front of him. He doesn’t know why he’s giving this girl advice from his own Sharlayan teenagehood. “—make sure there are no witnesses to see who threw the first punch.”
Two days later, the Master and Lady of the house are called urgently to the academy. Thancred feels a little guilty, and more than a little concerned that his nugget of advice might pop up in discussions. When the family arrives home, the children are sent to their room and dinner is split amongst the living quarters. The big oak table in the dining hall sits empty. The sun sets, and the moon draws late. Thancred nibbles on long-cooled food in his fourth floor room and reads by candlelight. At almost midnight, there is a knock on his door. He is half-expecting it, but it still sends a stone sinking in his gut. He steels himself for the inevitable.
He opens the door, and smiles.
Fourchenault does not waste time: “You were out of line.”
Thancred is old enough to no longer be intimidated by the man who never welcomed him as a distinguished ward, much less family. He says, simply, “Whatever she did, she was defending your honor.”
“She was defending your honor,” Fourchenault spits.
The dressing-down lasts roughly half a bell. Thancred is lectured that all school concerns were Fourchenault and his wife’s responsibility. Thancred is told Alisaie dunked a boys head into his soup and held it there—a far cry from the reactive punch Thancred recommended. Still, there is a sliver of pride in his chest at the news.
Such pride is dashed against the rocks by Fourchenault’s sharp boundaries. Thancred is told he is a bad influence. Thancred is told rumors will always exist against the most accomplished, and that it is the twins’ job to rise above them—not fight them with fists and protests that only served to signal guilt. Thancred is reminded he is always just a snap of fingers from returning to the streets. Thancred is told to stay away from both of them but especially Alisaie. Thancred is told she values his word too much, as if respect for him was some social toxin.
Thancred keeps to his room for almost a month, only leaving for lectures and the occasional evening with friends. He does not eat dinner with the family of the house. He studies, and sleeps, and completes his schoolwork, and—at least for now, with word of the incident spreading around the gossiping elites—keeps his nose clear of women. He does not feel bad about distancing himself. He'll be deployed again soon enough anyway.
He meets Ameliance in the hall, one night, on his way out for a drink. She stops as he strides past her. He can feel her head turning to follow him. He stills, and looks back.
“You did no wrong,” she voices, barely over a whisper, and then keeps walking.
AUTUMN
“I need a favor,” Alisaie states, confidently, from the entrance to the balcony. A party by and for the elite rages behind her.
Thancred has his arm around the waist of a woman whose name he has already forgotten, his finger extended towards the stars. He is halfway through telling her of the navigation techniques of a god he no longer worships, from a land she has not and will never see. They have ducked away for privacy. Alisaie must have been looking for him for some time.
“Alisaie,” Thancred says, “can this wait?”
Alisaie gives him a curt expression that assures him it absolutely cannot. She states, “I need you to kill someone for me.”
The woman at his hip startles. Thancred shoots her an apologetic smile.
“…Excuse me,” he says, unwinding his arm from around her. “Kids. You know.” She steps away with a notable trace of fear. He’s certain she doesn’t think Alisaie is actually serious. He does know, however, that his reputation is a double-edged sword of attractive roguishness and genuine danger. Thancred watches the woman excuse herself and then looks down at the ten year old Alisaie standing stoutly before him in her many-layered party dress.
“Alright, kid,” he says, gruffly, squatting down to her height. “What’s this about killing someone?”
“You told my mother you would,” she states, “for us, if you ever needed to.”
“Who told you that?”
“Aunt Gaëlle,” Alisaie replies, “when she was lush. She said it’s what you promised Mother instead of a present at our birth soirée.”
Thancred did say that. “And you’re cashing in?” he asks, a bit playful.
“I need him dead by next week.”
There’s something so unjoking in her tone, so unlike her usual, animated self, that it wipes the smirk off of Thancred’s face. She is not messing with him. She is actually asking.
He stands up. He looks back at the party, just beyond the balcony doors. Smiles and conversation bubble up beneath candlelight and gold accents. Alisaie’s parents are lost somewhere within, in a shuffle of networking and pleasantries. No one has noticed she is missing.
He cocks his head and says, “Walk with me.”
She nods, quickly, when it becomes apparent he is taking this seriously. She leads him by the hand away from the party and to the silence of the estate’s moonlit gardens. It is quiet here. They will not be subjected to nosy party guests nor the ever-present glares of those who think themselves better than him.
“Who hurt you?” he asks, the minute they are alone. He crosses his arms.
“What?” she says.
“Who hurt you,” Thancred repeats, gravely.
“No one,” she says, as if this was obvious.
“Your brother, then,” Thancred prompts.
“What about him?”
“Who hurt your brother?”
“My brother’s fine.”
Thancred’s mouth dips at the edges. His eyes shut, but some of the tension in his heart relaxes.
He says, “Alisaie,” and, “I’m not going to kill someone for no reason.”
He won’t lie—it wouldn’t take much, if she was actually hurt—but he’s not going to risk his Mark to disappear just anyone.
Alisaie hasn’t responded. He expected some petty squabble. Friend drama, or maybe boy drama. His straying ear has picked up discussion of some classmate that has taken an interest in her at school. Maybe she has a crush and doesn’t know what else to do about it but call in a hit. The thought makes him smile. It would be very Alisaie.
She is still silent. He grows wary again.
“You can tell me,” he says. He tips his head to her. “I won’t tell anyone. You know that.”
She looks away from him. Her lips purse in thought.
“Just lay out the situation for me,” he prompts, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it—just that I needed a reason.”
Her face scrunches. Oh, gods, there are tears in her eyes.
“…I have to get married,” she says, throat thick with a lump of devastation.
This is—not what he expected. His brow lifts.
“You’re ten,” he says, flatly.
“It’s starting,” she replies, face ugly but body not quite betraying a sob. “It happened to Bénédicte’s sister when she was nine.”
“What is it, exactly, that’s happening?”
She is staring at the ground. “Alphinaud’s the heir,” she mumbles. “Alphinaud’s smarter than me.”
It was verifiable, on paper. He’s certain they have shared their test scores and assessment results with one another. Sharlayan liked to evaluate a child’s potential young. “That’s not true,” Thancred assures her.
“His grades are better than mine.”
“Intelligence is more than grades, Alisaie. I assure you.”
She shakes her head like a dog shedding water. Makes some strangled, angry noise. Balls her fists. She isn’t in the mood to hear it, so he backs off. He lets her speak. It takes her a second to compose herself enough to find her voice.
“Alphinaud’s going to take father’s place on the Forum,” she says, words trembling, voice rising. “And I’m going to have to marry Averic fucking Accambray.”
Thancred has never heard Alisaie swear before. He didn’t know the word was even in her lavish, aristocratic vocabulary.
He steps carefully, not wanting to set her off. He uses logic in the face of raw emotion and a bitterly young age. He says, “…I don’t think your grandsire would approve of an arranged marriage for you.” He has never been one to give her father the benefit of the doubt, so he hopes it carries some extra weight when he adds: “I don’t think your father would ask that of you, either.”
“Oh, he won’t ask,” Alisaie snaps back. “He and Mother will say such things are archaic and primitive and unfitting of the great equalizer of education. They’ll say, ‘Oh, Alisaie, it will be so lovely when you and your brother receive your Archon Marks,’ and then schedule teatime with the Accambray boy behind my back—“ She gasps a deep breath. “And it’s all so obvious, because his father is on the Forum, too, and my studies are not as perfect as Alphinaud’s, and I’m not the heir, so it seems apt, as a contingency, to simply introduce us formally, Father thinks, and Mother knows, and Alphinaud is watching happen, and no one’s saying anything—“
The picture is coming into focus. She’s crying fully now. Thancred has never seen her so upset. This is beyond him. He has learned to walk among the upper echelons of Sharlayan like a wolf among sheep. She is a lamb, born and raised, and understands implicitly the unspoken intricacies of the world she has been entrusted to. He didn’t know. He didn’t realize. All of this has been happening outside his peripheral.
“So, this kid,” Thancred begins to say, “Accumbee.”
“Accambray.”
“Whatever,” Thancred says. “He’s who you want me to remove from the board?”
There is some hesitation, some natural empathy, in her. She freezes. She looks guilty. It’s enough to stall, but not stop, the nod she gives him in affirmation. She is many things, currently, but he senses she is desperate most of all.
“I’m not going to take out a ten year old,” Thancred tells her.
“He’s twelve.”
“Alisaie. I’m not going to kill a kid.”
She looks like she was expecting this. She looks as if she is about to start weeping again.
“Come’re,” he mutters, and leans down to embrace her. She wraps her arms tightly around him. She grips him like one slip will send her spiraling into the aether stream. He lifts, and her feet leave the ground. She wraps herself around him like a snare. He shifts her up, onto his hip. She’s getting too big for this, but he’s strong, and he can manage for now. Her arms are draped around his neck. He can already feel a dampness seep from her face to the shoulder of his tunic.
“It’s alright,” he tells her. “Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. Everyone who knows you has learned that the hard way.”
“‘M tired of being difficult,” she says.
“You’re not difficult,” he replies. He pats her back. Embraces her firmer.
“Don’t want to be here,” she says.
“This is your home,” he tells her.
“Hate it here,” she mumbles. “Wanna go with you and Grandsire.”
Thancred draws still.
“…How do you know about that?” he asks.
She doesn’t lift her face from his shoulder. “Father’s mad.”
Thancred imagines he would be. Still, it shouldn’t be weighing on her mind. She shouldn’t know about it at all. Their Eorzean mission was an open secret, surely, but—
“Don’t leave me behind,” she asks, quietly.
“Alisaie, I…”
It’s then that he notices they are not alone.
Thancred has been distracted. His eye slides to a meek rustle of grass to the left of where he shoulders Alisaie.
Alphinaud stands with perfect posture at the edge of the garden.
“Going to put you down, now,” Thancred says, giving Alisaie a final squeeze. He loosens his hold. She sinks off of him and back down to a world of moonlight and flora and polished topiaries. Her skirts ruffle. Her little dance flats touch cut grass.
She notices her brother, too.
“You asked him,” Alphinaud hisses.
“He said no,” Alisaie responds, equally harsh.
“It’s a crime to simply solicit a murder, Alisaie. You could be arrested.”
“Then it’s a good thing you would never throw me under the carriage wheel, dear brother.”
It has been some time since Thancred has seen them fight.
“Everybody calm down,” he says, stepping between the two of them. “Nobody’s getting married or arrested tonight. You’re kids. Your job is to go to your academy and do your schoolwork. These are problems for later.”
“It’s my problem now,” Alisaie says. Thancred blinks, surprised to hear the heat in her voice turn on him. Alisaie is a hot flame, but not unfounded in her concern.
“—I’ll talk to your grandsire,” Thancred says. It’s all he can think to do.
“When? Right before you leave us?” Alisaie yells, louder, startling her brother.
Ah. So that’s what this might really be about. Thancred glances back at Alphinaud. It’s clear from his expression that he knows, too. Thancred cannot stand there and deny that Louisoix is a reasonable line of defense for Alisaie. He was not lying when he said her grandfather wouldn’t permit an arranged marriage for one of his beloved successors. And now, that lifeline is a closing door. There is a duty to be done in Eorzea.
“You should sit down with your parents about this,” Thancred suggests. He knows, explicitly, that this is what he should have told her from the start. It’s what her father would want him to say. It’s not what he wants to say, though, and it’s not what she wants to hear.
He wants to tell her to be a bitch about this. He wants to tell her to kick and bite. He wants to tell her to lash out like an animal. He wants to tell her how, back in Limsa, the younger orphan girls used to carry rusted knives in their skirt pockets to ward off assault. Lockjaws, they’d called them. He’d made a point to never cross them by reputation. Bared teeth and a threat of a brutal, bone-locked death could get a woman surprisingly far in the world.
Alisaie’s mouth warbles with upset but she is no longer crying. “Will you talk to my father for me?”
There she goes again, trying not to be difficult.
“Your father has never once given half a shite about what I think,” Thancred says, “but your grandsire might be able to talk some sense into him. We’ll see.”
“Before you leave,” Alisaie notes, bitterly.
“Before we leave,” Thancred admits.
Alphinaud has been quiet.
“…I won’t let it happen,” the young heir says, voice barely audible.
Alisaie rolls right over him. “You’re just going to abandon me,” she shouts out at Thancred.
“I won’t let it happen,” Alphinaud says, louder.
“You and Grandsire care more about some backwoods continent than—“
“Alisaie!” Alphinaud yells. Alisaie freezes. Thancred’s attention snaps over to him. “I said I won’t let it happen!”
It’s a heartfelt offer, but one that Thancred can tell Alisaie does not wholly believe. She crosses her arms.
“You will very easily let it happen,” she states.
“I’ll stop it.” Alphinaud doubles down. “If it gets that far. I promise.”
“You wouldn’t cross Father,” Alisaie says.
“I can,” Alphinaud says.
“You won’t.”
“I can,” Alphinaud says, stronger.
“You haven’t done it before.”
“I can!”
“You’ve never once contradicted Father in your life,” Alisaie spits. “You hold onto his word like it’s legally binding. You follow him around like a loyal little duckling. You nod your head when he speaks like the word of Thaliak himself is dripping from his mouth. You—“
Thancred raises his hand for her to stop and, with a stubborn pout, she falls silent. Thancred nods to her in thanks. Thancred lowers himself down in front of Alphinaud.
He says, “You’re making a big promise there, kid.”
“I know what I am pledging,” Alphinaud replies.
“She’s done a lot to protect you over the years,” Thancred says. “I know she’s taken heat for you before. Shouldered blame. Thrown herself in the line of fire. I know she keeps the older boys off your back in school. And I know she wrote your essay on magick in warcraft last semester.”
Alphinaud pales in the face of these truths, but stays firm. “All the more reason for me to defend her in this matter.”
“He might be your father,” Thancred says, “but you’re her brother. And once your grandsire and I leave, you might be the only one in her corner on this.”
“I’m not afraid,” Alphinaud declares.
“She won’t forgive you if you fail to follow through.”
The twins’ eyes meet. Alisaie’s are narrowed, but Alphinaud’s are—genuine, Thancred thinks. Concerned and willing. Determined, even.
“I am not afraid,” Alphinaud says, again. To her, this time.
Thancred reaches over, squeezes his shoulder, and stands up.
“Good,” he says. He looks over at Alisaie. “You hear that? He’s got your back.”
Her face is pinched, but her shoulders have lost some of their stiffness. She says, a bit embarrassed at the affirmation, “We’ll see.”
“If he fucks it up, you write to me,” Thancred tells her.
“Hey!” Alphinaud exclaims, which makes Alisaie laugh, which breaks the tension between all three of them. He ruffles each of their hair, their heads ducking down to escape the rough affection.
“Let’s go back to the party,” Thancred suggests, “before your father accuses me of kidnapping you. Again.”
To his surprise, Alisaie takes his hand. Thancred sees Alphinaud eyeing the other one, so Thancred offers it up to him. He accepts it, hesitantly.
He’s never allowed him to see himself as any kind of familial figure towards them. It doesn’t matter what he or anyone else sees, however, when that protective instinct rises in his chest. He promised their mother he would kill for them. He promised Louisoix he would return the kindness done to him somehow, someway.
He will not let them down.
WINTER
“Not happening, Alisaie,” Thancred all but screams down at her. “Not fucking happening. Look me in the eye. I need you to stay with me.”
It’s poison. He can see it streak dark and vicious through the veins around the jagged gash left by the arrowhead. It’s poison, and even if he was anything above dogshite at aetheric healing his magick has been stripped from him. The toxin is embedded too deep to salve with prayer or platitudes. All he can do is battlefield medicine. He rips off a piece of his coat and forms a tourniquet around her arm. Better to cut circulation to a limb than let venom seep up to her heart. He presses fingers to the weak pulse at her neck. Says, “You’re alright,” and, “I know it burns. You’ll fight it.”
He has no idea what is in her system. He has no idea how long it will take to kill her. She’s sixteen—what the seven hells was she thinking, what the fuck was he thinking, letting her get anywhere near this much danger—but she looks much smaller without her gregarious, confident presence taking up more space than her body ever afforded her. She’s shivering. She’s cold. She’s slim and pale, eyes skyward, empty, unfocused, as if she was dead already—
He doesn’t know what else to do, so he slaps her.
“Twelve,” she yells, snapping back to him. “What was that for?”
“Don’t scare me,” he barks and, to his great relief, she rolls her eyes.
He loosens his grip on her. They’re in the middle of the wilderness, somewhere between far enough away from their aggressors to catch their breath and not anywhere near close enough to true safety.
“Ishgard,” she says, voice parched.
“How about a chirurgeon?” he replies, snarky, like their usual banter might summon some sense of normalcy back to them. “A Halonic sermon won’t do either of us good if you’re dead.”
“Al…” She coughs. “Alphinaud.”
“Will be waiting for you, whatever we do,” Thancred assures her. He can’t fail her. If he fails her here, he’ll fail Alphinaud too.
She is not, entirely, wrong in her suggestion. They are in hostile territory. Where was he going to find a healer? What if a backwoods, sympathetic chirurgeon failed to stop this? What if such a chirurgeon did stop this, and the two of them were still subsequently tracked and hunted like animals? He has barely an idea of who is chasing them. It is a two days’ hike to Ishgard—one, if he’s quick and does not spare a further moment of rest—but he cannot guarantee she will make the journey. She’s fading fast. He can see the aether draining from her face even if he can no longer feel its presence. He is thirty two years old and he doesn’t know what to do.
“…Crying,” Alisaie mumbles. “Stop. ‘M not dead.”
If Y’shtola was here, she would know. If anyone else was here, they would at the very least have made a decision by now. He is frozen beside the child he swore to protect. He is distinctly aware that, this time, his best is not enough.
He picks her up. Grunts at the weight. She’s not heavy, but his body is at its breaking point from their recent escape and the road ahead has not even begun. Trees swell up around him. The sky is growing dark. He starts walking and does not, no matter what, stop.
A great many bells pass. The sky darkens, then pinkens. The foliage passes by thick and then sparse. The fauna is disinterested in troubling them but the path is still steep. He nearly drops her, twice, stumbling over loose stones and ice.
He does not stop walking.
The hostile architecture of Ishgard has never looked so appealing. Its entrance is both a ward to those most unwelcome and a bastion of a finish line.
His voice is a hollow echo of formality when he says: “I am a Scion of the Seventh Dawn under the aegis of House Fortemps.”
He says, “Open the gate and summon a healer.”
He says, weak, “Please.”
He remembers the screech of iron. He remembers blurred vision and blood in his boots. He remembers calls for assistance. Suspicion, confusion, concern—emotions from the guards of Ishgard muddle into one mass beyond the fading light in Alisaie’s eyes. He has forced her to keep them open. For fifteen bells, into morning, he has forced her to keep them open. Maybe now she can finally rest.
“…’Saie,” he says, looking down at her, voice hoarse.
Someone rips her from his arms.
He snarls like an animal and lashes out at hands seeking to bind him. He stumbles, and falls to the ground. His knees hit hard stone and pain reverberates up his bones. Panic and delusion crowds his every sense. Was he being arrested? Was he being attacked? Did he do this, all this, for his entire life, just to deliver Alisaie into the hands of those who sought to end her? He must get her back. He must keep up his flee. He must not stop walking.
He wrenches himself free from the fingers digging into his skin, doubles over on himself, and vomits. Everything hurts. There are shouts around him. Bile coats his hands. He has to find her. He has to recover her. They have to keep moving. They have to never stop moving. He summons the strength to look up, up, at anywhere, searching, and sees—Alisaie, alive, standing, crouching down, looking worried—pale healing magic, summoned from her soul, pressing to his chest—Alisaie, little Alisaie, who he promised to protect, no matter what—
“Sleep,” Alphinaud says, and Thancred’s world falls to black.
He wakes in a quiet, empty room. His eyelids are open but the rest of his body is either unable or unwilling to move. His feet sting and ache at once. His breath is shallow. He stares up at a plain, wooden ceiling, and attempts to remember how he got here.
“You’re awake,” Alphinaud states into the silence. He’s seated at Thancred’s bedside. It is clear he has been waiting.
Thancred’s eyes scrunch, and he makes a grunt in admission. It’s all he can do. He’s dizzy, and dehydrated. Everything hurts.
He attempts to form words. He manages: “Poison.”
“We are well aware,” Alphinaud says. Then, with uncharacteristic softness: “She’s alive, Thancred.”
Thancred gives himself permission to die. He feels close enough to the edge to do it on command. It doesn’t come, so he just heaves out a single, shaking sigh of relief. He shuts his eyes. He nods, imperceptible.
It’s cold. Ishgard is cold. He didn’t feel it on his trek but he feels it, now, with a blanket strewn atop him and sunlight from a paned window squared over the room.
“Thank you.” Alphinaud is sincere. Thancred doesn’t want Alphinaud’s thanks. It’s out of character, and undeserved. Alisaie was in this mess because he couldn’t protect her in the first place.
“Tell her ‘m sorry,” Thancred mumbles.
“What?” Alphinaud replies. “You’ve saved Alisaie. What do you possibly have to apologize to my sister for?”
“Your mum,” Thancred slurs, with all his strength. “I know you… you still write to her. She should know.”
Alphinaud scoffs. “I won’t be telling her about any of this, that’s for certain. She’s got half a mind to whisk me and Alisaie back to our motherland as it stands—“ He stops talking. Thancred’s eyes have unfocused, and he fails to notice the sharp, concerned frown that graces Alphinaud’s features.
“Anyway,” the boy finishes, taking a beat. “As I said, Alisaie is stable. She’s been asking after you. Said you weren’t entirely there, towards the end.”
Alphinaud pauses.
Then, he says, “…I can’t easily repay you for this, Thancred.”
“I made a pledge to your mother. Nothing to do with you.”
The room grows quiet again. Thancred feels unconsciousness threaten him. He is so uncomfortable with the humble tone in Alphinaud’s voice that he wishes sleep would take him wholly and immediately and again.
“…Water,” he requests, instead.
Alphinaud nods. “Food, too. I’ll be back.”
The door to the room opens and then shuts.
Thancred allows himself to feel at peace, a promise kept for one more day.