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Sleep has always been a fickle and infrequent visitor. Rest, then, may well be a stranger. An awkward arriver, always late, filling spaces that should be familiar with a breath not quite held nor quite released. But the Warrior of Light must become familiar. She has been given little choice in the matter, just as she has been given little choice in being submerged in the thick heat of Hingan summer for her convalescence.
She can understand the shape of the decisions that were made without her — she doesn’t have much family that would know what to do with her, but there is a brother that would miss her. There are very few people who would know to think of him and fewer who would have an idea of where to look.
She doesn’t ask Aymeric what state she must have been in to make him decide it was a worthwhile journey, or a necessary one.
Instead, she tries to take comfort that he must have surely felt optimistic enough to have attempted bringing her at all. She knows that there is no sentiment or courtesy toward anyone on this Star that would convince him to risk whatever odds might’ve remained in her favor.
Similarly, she doesn’t ask Aymeric to explain the edge in his posture either, or the sentinel attention he turns on her every move. Like she’s become irreparably fragile in the moons since the Ragnarok brought her (part of her, or all of her) back to him (home).
Really, he might not be wrong, but she’s grown strong enough to feel a restless twinge at all his hovering and to quietly bemoan the relentless stillness of her current accommodation. The inn and its accompanying springs are private when paid to be. She had never considered the sanctuary of his company could be stifling, but they are both walking on eggshells and she’s so tired. He is too. She can see it in the bruise-like shadows under his eyes and the tension that won’t leave his shoulders.
The Warrior of Light wants to tell her Lord Commander that if she must be here, that if she must rest (endlessly and to distraction, avoiding the yawning rift she’s managed to carve between them), he should do the same. If he has taken it upon himself to be responsible for her (thank any god that may have once loved her that he has still taken her upon himself), he will need to learn to exist alongside this new companion of theirs too. There is nothing else they can do.
She never meant to hurt them.
Well, it might be good for them. Could’ve been, if rest had been thrust upon them in any other way than this, with too much time to survey all the damage. She wonders if it’s too much, but then, he’s still here. Stubborn man. Beloved, perfect, obstinate man.
His warm hand on her cold fingers draws her back into her frigid body. He massages her palm slowly, lifted from where she’d lingered against the edge of the ceramic bowl. In her other hand, she still clutches a wooden whisk. Her eyes meet his, still a little too bright, a little to molten. There is only so much she can hold together. There’s a fever burning far too deep. She is a finite vessel after all — something she understood intellectually before but.
“I can do it,” he says, hesitant to offer when she’s become increasingly agitated by the way he’s cocooned her from the world. It’s probably cruel that he can tell. And she doesn’t blame him. She can’t. Still.
“No, sorry, I was just distracted.” She doesn’t pull her hand away though, so he doesn’t stop drawing slow circles along her frigid skin. Her fingers are stiff. Hingan summer, breathless and shimmering, has coaxed Aymeric into a thin yukata for relief, but she is still wrapped in layers of wool. She isn’t shivering anymore, but she can’t hide the chill that still lingers in her any more than she can hide the restlessness breaking through the haze of her persistent fatigue. She tells Aymeric she thinks it’s getting better. Maybe it’s true. She’s always run cold. It should be a good sign the bed rest is starting to chafe.
“If you say so,” he says quietly. It’s not that he doesn’t believe her exactly. Like many things she says, maybe it’s true, or could be if he wants it to be. And maybe, right now, it doesn’t matter very much either way. She’s awake to say anything at all. He doesn’t tell her he’d be happy to have her lie to him if it means she’s with him to do it. He doesn’t need to. She knows. Neither of them is proud of it. And he doesn’t blame her. He can’t. Still.
“I want to do this for you,” she says. “You should rest.” This makes his hands go still, engulfing her fine-boned digits, slender and cold and breakable. She freezes too, aware she’s misstepped. Despite her best intentions, the Warrior of Light is still prone to breaking.
“I should — ” he sounds pained, almost strangled, and she flinches. It’s been like this, a building anxiety buzzing in her ears. He lets her hand go. “Right. Then, thank you,” he says instead of whatever flash of hurt nearly crested between them. She wonders if it’s wrong to wish it would. He’s too good to her (thank the heavens he’s too good to her).
Aymeric’s brow knits when she tries to smile for him.
She wants it to be reassuring, but she doesn’t really know how to do that. She doesn’t really know how to do anything right for him now. Everything feels wrong, and she doesn’t know how to make herself get better. He watches insecurity flash in those bright eyes and burn away before he has the chance to stop it. Don’t look at me like that.
The Warrior of Light came home. A miracle from the far edge of the universe, savior of the star (forever, always). She came home (part of her, or all of her). And that’s supposed to be enough.
There is no one (left) to blame.
The thing is, they (everyone) are all so very alive. Alive enough to move on while he watched her lie so damnably still, near enough to hold for the first time in far too long, tucked somewhere he couldn’t reach yet again. He is alive enough to wonder if she’s finally chosen her dead (surely, they demand less of her) every time sleep settles on her a little too heavily. Everyone else is alive enough to fill their time with things that aren’t her.
And surely this is the consequence of true salvation; rescue is transient by nature, martyrs are their deaths, but what balance in the universe could possibly have left her in suspension? Left him alone right beside her? He knows. He knows. Aymeric has only ever wanted to do what he can, but —
He should rest?
It takes far too much effort to keep himself from laughing, disbelief and impotence shuddering down every nerve like an aftershock. This isn’t the first time. It won’t be the last. She won’t forgive him if he locks her away from the world forever. He wouldn’t forgive himself either. Eventually she’ll slip between his fingers for them both. He thinks she’s too good to let herself resent him. But Aymeric —
So this won’t be the last time. But it’s been the worst. And every next time, he thinks, could be (impossibly) worse.
She doesn’t even love them. The star’s perfect lamb, innocent to the altar, wanting for nothing. He’s had far more ignoble thoughts than this since she made it all the way home and crumpled, a star collapsing. He curls his hands into careful fists in his lap. Everything they do takes effort. Everything is deliberate.
The Warrior of Light watches shadows flit across his face. He won’t say the things he thinks won’t help her right now, too breakable in his estimation to share new fractures with. And he doesn’t think she needs his help. This drives sharply between her ribs, but she doesn’t want to worry him any more than she already is. This is an impasse. Don’t carry this by yourself.
They bear it.
Her hands slowly glide into motion again, the whisk rhythmic in the bowl, her wrists precise. She doesn’t love any of them. She doesn’t know how. She wants to tell him the things she learned about herself as she unraveled. The things she wanted and the things that showed her the way home. That what she does know is —
“It is easier, when I am with you,” he says after a long time of watching her go through the motions of making him tea. It is probably going to be cooler than it should be, subject to her cold hands and drifting attention. But she’s there to make it. How could he possibly ask for more than that? Why can’t he ask for more than that? Why can’t they?
“Maybe I mean, it is easier to rest when you are with me,” he corrects himself.
The way the time is stretching, absolutely nothing seems to matter. He says things because he can’t bring himself to talk to her. And it’s all so suffocatingly dire. They really don’t know how to do this.
She sets down the whisk. She pours his cup. “Is it?” she asks, and tries that smile again. She never did smile much. He liked that when she did, it was for him more often than he expected. He won’t tell her that he wishes she would stop. Not for him, not like this, not right now. She is reemerging into a world that barely managed to hold onto her. He isn’t sure if he has.
After the end of the world, does he have the right for this to hurt?
She holds out a cup for Aymeric to take, patiently waiting in her bed (drowning in blankets, but she rises for bells longer now than she did even last week, which is supposed to mean something). She moves slowly. Call it ceremony to keep him from seeing her hands begin to shake with effort. The chirurgeons and the conjurers all say there is nothing wrong with her (they shake their heads slowly, they say something is not right but) — there are so many reasons to be optimistic. She is the Warrior of Light, after all. This was a miracle. She is a miracle.
He wants to strangle them. He wants to tell them to learn to be afraid the way he has. This is a crisis of faith. Say a prayer when no one is listening.
“It’s alright if it’s not.” She stares at him, waiting. He’s trying to hold onto them both. He’s trying to hold them together like he’s the only one who can. She wishes he’d just tell her that he’s tired. Bone deep and unshakable. She wishes he’d let that much be her fault so they can both just…
What, exactly? Move on?
The summer heat bears down through the open window, weighing her down in her bed. She’s fought for all the time in the world. She thinks he probably watched her die.
They are choking. This is a hard pill to swallow.
The vibrant green froth trembles against the porcelain. He takes the cup. It’s not like he ever thought she was invincible. But maybe there’d been some hubris in him left to humble after all. He stares at her small hands and thinks he did nothing while she… He can imagine what he wants, he supposes. She looked so peaceful when he finally had her back in his arms. And she was so cold.
He wants to vomit.
“’Twould be far worse if you were anywhere else.” He says at last. Exhausted. But it’s the truth. Her expression softens (she stops smiling), and he feels something tight relax in his chest. Just a little break, something snapping that he’s been waiting to give. Not a lot, but it’s something. They need something to give. And that’s probably his own fault, for letting this devour him. But it kind of feels like her fault too. There must be someone to blame.
“I’m glad,” she says. “I…” The Warrior of Light has not made a habit of letting herself want, but maybe she should start. “Don’t want to be anywhere else.” Aymeric studies her face, the way she won’t make eye contact. He’d take lying if it meant hearing her voice but. Well. He’s never taken her for a liar, anyway. He tells himself that rescues are transient but they still take time. He tells himself she is not invincible but she did come home (all of her, of course it’s all of her). As if any part of her wouldn’t find her way back.
Even if it takes the shape of forever, they can, because they are (she is) so very impossibly alive.
She looks back up at him, like she’s searching for the fissures in the unyielding pressure that’s hunted them too, straining to hear the distant chime of furin slipping through the heat. Just a little break. Just a little relief. She thinks they both let go of a breath they’ve been holding for far too long. It’s his turn to smile for her, small and honest and terribly sad.
Of course she’s the light at the end of everything. Of course he’s still here despite it all.
Aymeric sets the tea aside, half left and well gone cold, a deep and weary sigh lingering by the cup. He takes the tray with all her tools from its perch on her altar of blankets, careful and deliberate. He doesn’t ask to be given space on her futon, gingerly adjusting her to make himself fit. She lets him arrange them without comment. This can be what needs to be said, for now.
She leans into him when he wraps her into his arms and tells herself he holds her a little more securely today than yesterday, a little more like she might not quite shatter if he touches her.
He presses his lips to the top of her head. Gentle, gentle. This is hard for me.
She reaches for his hand. She doesn’t hide the tremor in her fingers. She can’t hide the cold. I’m still here.
He draws slow circles on her palm again. I want that to be enough.
She turns her face toward him in an invitation that he captures between his teeth, painstaking in its restraint and then achingly familiar. It’s alright if it’s not.
He steals her breath, slowly, and it’s protest and gratitude and fury held so tightly that she sinks into the mess of it. She lets it drown her and offers him her existence, raw and tenuous, in exchange. It’s an inelegant thing, to simply exist. But it’s what she has and, right now, it’s effort. She knows it terrifies him that it’s effort.
Aymeric looks at her like she’s about to slip beneath the waves when he thinks she’s not watching. He reaches for her, sudden and stilted, restraining an anxiety that she knows he can’t shake. He kisses her and she thinks he’s still verifying signs of life. So, for now, she kisses him back. She thinks he loathes that she knows, that she can taste the fear on his lips, but she still kisses him back. And he still lets her (he would let her do anything).
He wants to rage without direction, to be monstrous for once. He wants to demand impossible things. He wants to weep. She is still so cold. She is still so fragile. He thinks the heavens are unjust if he’s expected to be grateful. He thinks far too many things when he knows he should know better. And how miserable for her to find it all, transparent in his teeth against the fluttering pulse in her neck, the aimless grief his lips press against her eyelids.
The Warrior of Light doesn’t know how to fix this thing she’s done or undo what she had to do. And they both know she’d do it over again the same way, far away and without him. The cicadas are incessant. Summer marches on. He is furious and she is alive.
She’s come back for them to grind salt into each other’s wounds (it can’t be helped if he’s holding her so close). She’s come back to watch him suffer through the slow untangling of all the things constricting his throat (it can’t be helped if he’s better than she makes him). But in the end, she still sleeps better tucked against him, his body heat a gentle assurance through the many layers of cloth between them.
Aymeric counts the Warrior of Light’s heartbeats like he’s counted the steps she’s taken out the Gates of Judgment so many times before. He tells himself she’ll wake up this time, just like the last. He tells himself he can hate this as long as she makes it through. They must.
He settles to the steady rise and fall of her chest. For a moment, he rests too.