Archive of Our Own

ONE

That was that, the meeting adjourned, and the little lost flock of Scions made for the Ocular’s door - hopefully, with more to think about, if that was something to hope for. Emet-Selch was quite certain they’d plough on through the Lightwardens irrespective of anything he had to say on the matter.

It’d be a mess, no doubt. But manageable given the benefit of an immortal lifespan. Still, things changed and plans went awry.

He’d have been content to mull that fact over another while longer, but a brisk of chatter had drawn his ear. The Exarch kept his voice low, speaking familiarly to the twins who listened with dutiful nods and some vaunted promise to do their best, despite the odds, despite their corporeal bodies being a breath away from becoming a shade and the weight of a world beginning to bear down.

Well, he could certainly sympathise. Could , but wouldn’t.

“Can I help you, hero?” Emet-Selch said, when it became glaringly apparent that this Warrior of Light was staring at him for a reason.

He nodded. Emet-Selch cut a glance over at the Exarch, but he was still mid-lecture. There was a certain reluctance in the way he looked to the warrior, he knew it’d happen, and it did, lo and behold - a certain tug .

It was like the memory was lost and he was on the verge of falling into it again, only it wasn’t, he could recall it in an instant if he wanted. But it was impossible, a coincidence, a trick of the mind.

“If you’re going to accompany us,” he said, “there are things we should agree on.”

Emet-Selch hummed to himself; concern for his friends or the establishing of a pecking order?

“No doubt there are. Go on,”

The warrior reeled off a short list. We listen to one another, safety is tantamount, we don’t leave people behind. The smile faded from Emet-Selch’s face. How dull.

He reached to push away the hand the warrior had raised to conduct his words, but as his fingertips brushed his wrist, the Ocular seemed to shudder beneath his feet. There was a brilliant flash of colour in the corner of his eye. A voice, from nowhere. It said something far away that might have sundered him, all this time later.

Emet-Selch stepped back an inch and tried to bolt on a straight expression. For each braying thought that said it cannot be! a softer voice replied, saying it can, it is .

The room was very blue. He’d never noticed that before.

“Understood?” asked the warrior.

Emet-Selch forced a smile.

TWO

The first time the warrior called out for him was to talk .

Night had returned to the skies above Fort Jobb and the people of the camp had regained their rhythms relatively quickly. The sun set, they found their beds, and a steel-clad vigil kept watch for monsters creeping through the forest. As was their wont, the Scions had made a brief sojourn on a menial errand that Emet-Selch didn’t care to busy himself with. Then, they’d rest - all the better to brave the Rak’tika Greatwood.

As it was, the warrior was not resting. He had found a stony perch some ways up a quiet watchtower and sat observing the scant goings on below. Every so often a pair of guards would exchange duties, a patient would need tending to, or an amaro would wake to fluff its feathers. The warrior watched it all with a fondness that belied the little time he’d been here. But then, people watching had always been a favourite-

No, no. Emet-Selch had tore his eyes away with an inward kick. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how severe the separation was. Two new people? Or one and the same, only with a wealth of memories hidden away.

Memory was a rather fickle thing though, wasn’t it? A lance of guilt came next. After all, it’d been he who’d denied the truth of the matter, even when most of all, more than anyone, he’d wanted to find…

Emet-Selch plucked the thought away before it could conclude.

“Sometimes I think you only pretend to listen to me,”

“Now, don’t be like that. I said I’d offer my cooperation - and it’d be poor manners, besides.”

The warrior gave him a wry look that was almost a smile, then regarded the hands curled in his lap. Emet-Selch took a seat beside him, sighing.

When he went on, the warrior claimed, with a warning look, that he was not “daft”. He said that he knew something was happening even if the whys and wherefores were beyond his ken. “Why else,” he said, little more than a whisper. “would I be feeling so strangely?”

There were more questions; why else would the Ascian be still following so closely (Emet-Selch could’ve answered that: as I’ve said before and will say again, if your memory is anything to go by ), why else would Urianger be pulling him aside to give him cryptic warnings (Emet-Selch could’ve answered that, too: that, by and large, seems to be what he does, my dear ).

“I’ve been to the Thirteenth, but somehow, being here and knowing the ruined timeline, it’s helped me understand.”

“Oh? Is this about to take a turn for the esoteric?”

“Hardly.” The warrior didn’t look at him. “There were other lives, weren’t there?”

Emet-Selch watched the lilac boughs of the trees that wended up to Holminster Switch. “For you, perhaps.”

He expected a response but none came, and when he looked to the warrior he couldn’t help a sigh. Just why did he look so wretchedly sad all of a sudden? It lasted only a moment before he pulled himself in by the seams. Their eyes met, Emet-Selch remembered the flames in Amaurot.

“If you were to tell me something, anything -”

“I could tell you most everything,” he said, prickling. “and it would not do the tale justice.”

“Why not? It might help,”

“I can say with certainty that it won’t,” Emet-Selch toyed with his gloves. Absurd. To explain… it was impossible, beyond the scope of that which magic could wrought or that he had the capacity to give. To say what once was would be to breathe life into what was not.

“Then beyond that, I…” the warrior started and stopped.

“Does it pain you so, to ask?” Emet-Selch raised a brow.

“Yes, but I do want to know.” A resolute resolve, alas. The trouble it’d caused; always such a bleeding heart.

“For yourself?”

The warrior stumbled again, and swallowed. “Yes.”

Emet-Selch exhaled a hum and gently took the warrior’s chin in his hand. Those eyes bore into him, a body coiled on the precipice of some hope, and Emet-Selch took a long moment to search what he could for anything he could find. Anything?

He realised, dumbly, that the hope had been his . His shoulders slumped, but he kept his touch.

“You have to remember, my dear,”

“I-”

He tightened his grip.

“You have to .”

The warrior did not nod or speak. Emet-Selch let him go with a flourish, and rose rather ungainly to his feet. If it was to be his last night of relative comfort before chasing another Warden, he’d sooner spend it alone.

THREE

Owing to the fact that he had made a somewhat sincere vow to assist, Emet-Selch would’ve described Slitherbow as… “quaint”. Certainly, it seemed a fitting enough place for a witch of the Source to make a home.

Home as it was for the few who followed an equally “quaint” doctrine, rooms for the small troupe of visitors that’d suddenly darkened the doorsteps were in short supply.

“I told them it wouldn’t be a problem.” the warrior was saying, fumbling with a guard on a gauntlet.

Emet-Selch turned to look at the “quaint” room they’d settled the hero of the hour in - it was little more than a cave with a cot and a few odd candles. It’d been a lengthy trek from the borderlands of the Crystarium to Slitherbough, however, so he could not doubt that it was a sight for sore eyes even so.

“Won’t it? It seems a touch on the cosy side if you ask me,”

The warrior flashed him a simple smile. “It’s not like that’s your problem. You’ll disappear,”

The words twisted inside of him. I will?

Emet-Selch smoothed it quickly and turned to a table that’d been made from a cured tree stump. There were a dozen dozen rings, he traced the outermost, and looked lazily at the offering of bandages and poultices, and beside them a little wicker basket with whittled figures inside. Deities? Ancestors? Toys?

It occurred to him how strange it was to find himself here in this room with him . Emet-Selch turned to glance over his shoulder. The warrior was fussing with the other bracer, now, a slight wince on his face. It came off and was discarded with a clank , and Emet-Selch turned back.

Hydalen had had him for longer. Tempered - the gall of it. He had stoppered the ardour, slain his fellows and now come here to undo another great work. Were they truly so at odds? Had it always been so? Or was that her influence?

He was her greatest champion, was he not? Emet-Selch wondered if it felt, sometimes, as though he were being implored to do these feats rather than acting on an autonomous instinct, much the same way he wondered about himself. However, when he’d decided to ask, he turned and saw the man fast asleep in an ungainly heap on the cot.

“Oh, fearsome hero.” he muttered to himself.

Emet-Selch covered the dolt with his own cloak and a blanket, tossing it over his body one-handed - he did not care to tuck the man in, after all. He thought he might stir, but the warrior barely moved save to breathe.

An awfully mortal thing, that. A push and pull that went on and on, that you could feel on the skin. Emet-Selch glanced down at the sleeping face and carded a hand through his hair. Different, so different… but if he closed his eyes it wasn’t so-

A soft, drowsy voice stirred.

“Remember what we talked about?”

Emet-Selch did not open his eyes. “Yes,” he said. And he did, he remembered everything.

“There’s… sometimes, when I’m waking or falling asleep… I…”

He waited.

Nothing.

Cracking open an eye, Emet-Selch let out a dry huff of laughter. Dead to the world, again! He ran his hand from his hair to his cheek, and there closed his eyes to seek out in the aether that which he’d confirmed when they’d first touched in the Ocular.

Sure enough, nothing had changed. A flash at the corner of his eye, even closed, and a face without a voice, words without sound. A man with a borrowed name in a place twice removed from home.

Emet-Selch adjusted the corner of the blanket, then retreated into the darkness.

FOUR

The Scions pushed deeper into the forest’s gut, into Yx’Maja, and whilst the gnarled canopy kept the worst of the light from boring down on them, it still felt uncomfortably like an itch beneath the skin.

Emet-Selch kept his presence to a polite minimum, and gave Fanow an equally wide berth, not particularly relishing the idea of being questioned to within an inch of his life.

Occasionally, the party would venture into the thicket and strike a camp when they declared a false nightfall of sorts. To his delight, Emet-Selch spent a wonderful half hour watching Thancred bested by a tent.

It was during times such as these where he and his warrior of eld had the best of their conversations. And conversations they were, now, having reached a bypass of sorts. Their caution waned in the face of more immediate threats, and though the curiosity about lives past had not been slaked, it became easier to exchange simpler questions.

It was pleasant, it ached; Emet-Selch decided he would wonder at the dichotomy another time.

There was too much to get wrapped up in in the here and now, which was a rarity and a sensation only he could inspire. Such as he was! He had a half-yalm stare and a smile that came quickly and easily and as softly as a feather on a breeze. He had a gentleness that’d never be allowed to flourish, but that he cherished even so.

The cut was still cruel and deep. Time ago, he had learned all these things for the first time and been duly charmed. Now, it was strange to feel it again no less intently. Emet-Selch wondered, with a rather self-deprecating grimace, what unfortunate thing that said about him .

It was all rather complicated. Fortunately, Thancred was once again on hand to provide a diversion.

“-tomorrow we’ll liaise with the last of the scouts and then start back to Fanow. If we make good time, we may well be able to make for the pyramids before the day’s end. So to speak.” the warrior was saying.

“All very encouraging,” Emet-Selch said beside him. They’d taken up on the far side of camp nearby a pool of crystalline water, using an overturned trunk as a seat. “You don’t seem to have accounted for the myriad distractions you’ll be prone to,”

The warrior laughed a little. Thancred watched from across camp, nursing a cup of something in two very tense hands. Emet-Selch shot him an airy smile which he did not return.

“I cannot walk away from those who need help. It’s a small thing, to ease someone’s burden,”

“You ought to be careful,” Emet-Selch ran a hand up the warrior’s back. A flutter of lashes and a caught breath. Thancred’s head picked up. “You’ll need your strength, soon enough,”

“True. But this will be a beautiful place when the night returns. It’ll be worth it.”

Well, that was rather subjective. He ran his hand down again to linger at the small of his back, and won a coy smile for his trouble. It fluttered again when he leaned in close to whisper.

“My dear, there’ll be a line from here to Fanow of folks angling to thank you,”

He let his gaze slide to Thancred, who’d cottoned on with a wonderful glare. As it turned out, if you were an inept, aether-void tagalong, looks could not kill.

“They won’t need to. I never ask for that,”

Emet-Selch turned back, and the warrior was looking at him. It was a smile and a supplication, a reassurance that didn’t need to be made to him but was being extended anyway. The light cast his eyelashes as shadows across his cheeks, his hair stirred faintly in a solemn breeze, and a cut he’d caught on his lip begged to be soothed.

He looked and looked, and would’ve done so longer if the warrior hadn’t laughed, softly.

Emet-Selch couldn’t quite say what he’d been doing.

FIVE

Electing to bow out early, the Warrior of Light took to bed with a smile and a wave of a hand… and his shadow left it all of five minutes before making a tremendous show of standing and yawning and declaring that he’d follow.

Thancred kicked at a bolt of wood that’d tumbled from the fire.

“So, we’re going to let this happen?”

“You know as well as I,” Urianger raised a brow, looking from the mangled tome he’d brought from Il Mheg. The firelight lapped at his face, making the shadows dance beneath his eyes. “the futility of such an endeavour. One cannot stop something happening that already has.”

Not strictly true , Thancred tipped out the dregs of his cup and set it down on the grass, sparing a thought for old friends. “I know what he’s doing.”

“I daresay.”

He grimaced at that. “No. No , I know how he aims to play this. You find a figure of import you can sway - through word or deed or,” he gestured at the tent. “or false protestations, and you ply them until they buckle and you can take what you need. This was my life in Limsa, I’d recognise the game anywhere.”

“Truly?”

Thancred blinked up at Y’shtola. She was smirking at him. He rolled his eyes.

“Truly! And I was very good.”

“Well,” Y’shtola sat neatly beside the fire, staring through it with an eerie comportment. “I have my own concerns. He and I have spoken of them.”

“You and the Ascian?”

“Our friend and I,”

“Truly?” Thancred looked from her to Urianger, who’d given up on the tome for the time being.

Y’shtola nodded. “He thanked me for my concern and reassured me that he’s not without his own misgivings. But there is something… curious.”

He’d been about to huff that too right there was , but Urianger pushed a lock of hair behind his ear and agreed with a low hum that Thancred felt as much as heard.

“An unusual familiarity?” Urianger asked Y’shtola, who nodded, and the two of them exchanged satiated glances. Thancred caught her eye and gestured for her to go on, but as was growing more commonplace, she elected to hold those cards close to her chest.

Minfilia turned over in her sleep. Thancred looked to her, then caught Urianger’s eye.

“Regardless, all we can do is keep a silent vigil until such a time as the danger becomes… overt, shall we say?”

“That time may come too late.”

“Or not at all,” Urianger said.

A silence withered the three of them, then. Urianger glanced off into the trees where the light made the air shift and shiver, Y’shtola looked to her twined fingers, and Thancred watched the tip of the fire strike out and upwards like a cracking whip.

He had to have his reasons, didn’t he? The Warrior of Light had never done anything outwardly impulsive or damaging before, he’d never gone out of his way to court disaster, even if it’d hounded him once or twice or three dozen times before.

Thancred sighed. “It’ll all end in tears.”

Y’shtola, oddly, was smiling. “Do you take such a dim view on all romances?”

Romances?! Thancred balked. Was an Ascian even capable of such a thing? It was next to impossible to imagine Lahabrea mooning over a lover. This one, this snake in the grass, was no less implacable in that regard.

He opened his mouth to say so when he saw Urianger smiling smally, wryly at him. A flush crept up his neck to his cheeks. Ah. Thancred suddenly wished they were on the move again.

“Oh, please,” he said curtly, and found Urianger’s hand on the grass beside his.

SIX

The urgency of the group’s foray into the Greatwood bore down on them with the landing of Eulmore soldiers in the region. Hidden in plain sight, Emet-Selch watched the haste play out differently amongst the cast; Thancred was prone to bouts of sulking, Urianger quite the opposite, and his dear hero was as he was, as he ever would be - unshakable, unflappable.

It was a bizarre thing to have lived so long and watch others panic over the passing of a few days, but he saw the wear of it on the warrior’s face.

Typically, Emet-Selch kept himself hidden in Fanow, restricting appearances to brief exchanges with the warrior when he called for a good morning or a good night . A ritual without meaning, currently, but he granted it all the same.

On one occasion where he wasn’t called to bid him his usual restful sleep, Emet-Selch took it upon himself to the find the man, and discovered him, as was his wont, on the outskirts of the settlement looking out.

They shared a seat, they spoke in low voices - what had been truly intended as a brief collusion turned into a recounting of the day, a flurry of questions and a dabbling of prophecy. What will happen in the Ravel?

Eventually, the warrior ceased to reply, slumped beside Emet-Selch, asleep on his shoulder.

A rather familiar sight, once upon a time.

The sensible thing to do would be to leave before he was spotted, or else wake the poor fool and then retreat, but it was admittedly a small thing to redirect the whims of the Viis who passed to find some other route and allow the warrior a moment longer. His weight was steady and solid, the sound of his breathing less faithful than clockwork but far more pleasant. He set an arm around his waist and contented himself to remain.

Perhaps half an hour passed, perhaps longer - the warrior awoke with a charming start, blinking blearily up at him. Emet-Selch couldn’t help a smile.

“Well, that was rude of you.”

“I fell asleep?”

“I didn’t clobber you over the head, no, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Apologies,”

“Duly rejected.” Emet-Selch said dryly, watching the warrior peel away to stretch, then stifle a yawn.

He imagined he’d stand, then, set off on some other task or burning need to help and fuss, but he didn’t. Instead, he settled back at Emet-Selch’s side and looked at him. A smile grew. He frowned. The smile grew moreso.

“What?”

The warrior shook his head.

“No, tell me. What is it? Is it the fact that I’ve sat here as your pillowcase this last hour?”

His arm was around his waist again. The Viis were rushing; no time to waste, no time to delay. No time to think this over . But there was, actually, wasn’t there? Only Emet-Selch didn’t want to. He hadn’t needed to before...

“Thank you,”

He took in a breath and exhaled it heavily. Thank you. What was he to do with that?

Somewhere close, a Viis ran with a raised word to rouse her fellows. Evidently, Fanow had spurred to action. The warrior looked away to trace the sound, Emet-Selch did not, and when he looked back they fell into one another again.

And there it was, the smile, a brief downward glance. A tentative hand came to rest on his shoulder, and he leaned in just so, just a little-

“Don’t,” Emet-Selch said, and did not know why only that it was probably the correct thing to do. A chance, for them both, to sidestep something vast. Irrespective of if he wanted to, it was right… it was-

Ah. The warrior was frowning. Emet-Selch spoke again.

“You’ve no idea what you’re doing.”

Such a stubborn man; he made to say it - Emet-Selch - which was not him and suddenly he could not bear to hear it. He covered the warrior’s mouth with a press of his fingertips and a severe glance.

“That,” he said. “isn’t my name,”

He didn’t skip a beat. The warrior huddled closer with a glint in his eye and a beseeching whisper. “Then what is? What is mine? How do you know me?”

Emet-Selch could’ve laughed if he hadn’t been bolted to the spot.

Briefly, he glanced downwards, only to be gently redirected by a hand on his cheek. Close enough to count each lash.

He was warm, but something of the night hung about him; a hint of a scent, sharp like the rising air, the kind you only caught from beside the window of some faraway place with nothing better to do than watch the stars. There were no stars in Fanow, but even if there were, it would be impossible to see them through closed eyes.

The kiss was barely a kiss. The warrior turned his head just so and parted his lips, a mingle breath, a slip of fire that spread from his fingertips to his spine and pooled. It was just one kiss.

From behind, someone called the warrior’s name.

SEVEN

Fanow was exultant when Y’shtola made her return. Emet-Selch watched a crowd gather around her with questions about the Ravel, about the poison, about how she had sidestepped death. Personally, he thought someone ought to tell her not to try that particular parlour trick for a third time.

Nearby beneath a canopy, Urianger watched proceedings wistfully, and Thancred sat, bowed next to Minfilia, nodding along with whatever she was bending his ear with. Emet-Selch raised a hand as he passed, but none of them returned his jovial smile. No matter.

“Not joining in?”

The warrior stood at a wooden railing with the wind in his hair and a sad sort of smile. “Not tonight.”

Runar was recounting the entire spectacle - minus Emet-Selch’s part in it. He watched for a moment, unsure, uncaring . Y’shtola laughed behind her hands.

Such a merry little group, weren’t they? The warrior mistook his sigh for a yawn, perhaps - he shot him a delicate sidelong look.

“You don’t have to stay for this.” he said.

“Indeed. My part here is largely played,” he tilted his head, and the warrior smiled.

“You can use the room, if you wish. I’ll not sleep tonight. Too much to think on,”

It plucked at his curiosity and rather dampened some flame in him. Emet-Selch nodded, and passed him by with a lingering touch to the small of his back. “Well, try not to overexert yourself. The Exarch will not be impressed if I bring you back slung over my shoulder.”

He promised not to, he said good night, and Emet-Selch could not have said why he took him up on the offer.

The room in Fanow was, at least, a step up from the cave they’d shared upon a time in Slitherbough. There was a window, a bed, a table and chairs and all manner of clutter that he picked over, listlessly.

Fragments from Ronka, stones and books cut with the memory of an Empire that existed only in these small pieces separated from the stem.

After staring back at a small stone owl long enough to feel quite unsettled, he set it down, covered it with the tablecloth, and perched in the chair set by the table with his head in his hand.

Outside, there was a peel of laughter. A pattering on the boarded windows. Would he have been happy, he wondered, if he had been born to this life, knowing only this corner of it? Would it be enough? Or would knowing no different simply make it so?

Emet-Selch didn’t truly plumb the depths of the question. He lifted his head when the door opened, and the two of them exchanged a glance of surprise.

Evidently, the warrior had been caught out in the rain. A drop fell from his cheek as he split into a grin. Emet-Selch couldn’t place it. What had happened now ?

He put the question in an arch look, the warrior laughed, softly, shook his head and sank onto the bed and began to remove his boots.

Emet-Selch watched, quietly. The boots were stacked neatly within arms reach, and then came off the gauntlets and the cloak, and two buttons of a rather sodden shirt.

The warrior raised his head when he drew near. He parted his legs for Emet-Selch to stand between and looked up at him. Gracious, doe-eyed, smiling still . Emet-Selch frowned but the question died in his throat. Ah . And then the warrior was running a hand from his stomach to his chest.

His fingers were splayed, the touch was slow and soft. Emet-Selch caught the hand in his and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss to the knuckles. Such a lovely intake of breath. The warrior’s eyes widened a little, and it occurred to him that he’d never felt any of him, a hand or a cheek or anything else, skin to skin.

A travesty easily rectified, and the warrior watched him oh-so-raptly as he bit off the gloves. 

He shrugged off the robe next. When the warrior’s eyes lifted again, Emet-Selch caught his hands in his and twined their fingers together.

“My dear,” he began, with a wry smirk of his own, now. “People will talk.”

“They already are.”

True enough, he conceded the point with a breath of laughter. There was no wrathful mother for the word to get back to this time, at least.

Though, he’d have made it so. He’d have it so. He was still halfway in thoughts but went easily to sit beside the warrior, who moved to kiss him before he could think how to prompt it himself.

Their hands stayed clasped until the warrior dared to deepen a kiss, just a touch - but just as quickly, it fell apart. Emet-Selch opened his eyes with a pointed frown.

“Sorry, sorry.” The warrior had the good grace to hide his laughter, at least. He reached out with a hand poised to touch. “Can I-”

“As though you need to ask.”

To prove a point, Emet-Selch brought the warrior down with a hand curled around his neck, to lay with him, over him, between his legs with a warm breath and a shiver. The kisses rejoined. He balled a fist into his hair, the warrior’s hands pushed up his shirt to splay across his chest.

The pretense faded, then, as thin a veil as it had been. It seemed ridiculous to recall how carefully he’d maintained a distance between them when this felt so inevitable. The kisses were slow and a hair’s breadth from being desperate.

And then, the warrior lapped into his mouth. Only once, just once - he pulled back to adjust his position on the bed. He smiled and whispered another apology, and Emet-Selch discarded it, catching him by the scruff of his collar to make amends with a heated kiss. The pretty shyness the warrior had was delightful upon another day - when he toyed with him at camp, for instance - but now, he wanted the reservations gone, entirely.

It only took a quiet word, or two, my dear , and the warrior moved with him, a clever tongue meeting his. It was blissful. Emet-Selch didn’t feel the hands at his navel until he did , when the touch went through him like a shudder.

Outside the room, he could hear the celebration continuing, its participants having no idea that a rejoining of sorts was happening tonight. Would anyone miss the hero of the hour?

No , a voice said, not more than I.

A gasp of pleasure brought him to the present and he realised it’d been his. The kiss broke, the warrior rested brow to brow with him, sharing a single breath.

Emet-Selch’s trousers had been unbuttoned and loosened enough for the warrior to slip his hand inside and curl pretty fingers around his cock. The look in his eyes was darker, shining , though the wisp of a smile belied his need to please. And so he did, slowly at first.

The touch anchored him to the spot - nobody had dared, or else been given the opportunity, to touch him for a long time, for a hundred lifetimes or more. Nobody had ever smiled to see him loitering in their room, either.

A whisper in his ear asked if it was good . Emet-Selch had meant to reply but couldn’t, he’d meant to begin divesting the warrior of his damp garments but hadn’t, now altogether too occupied with clutching the thin bed covers.

Eventually, the growing need the warrior stoked with quicker, firmer strokes bade him move. Emet-Selch hummed a note of pleasure, taking his turn to explore the warrior’s chest, following the lines of muscle upwards to the pectorals. He brushed a thumb over a nipple, then again when it won him a wonderful gasp.

He teased him so this way for a time, until he tugged off the warrior’s shirt to rake a hard line down his back. He groaned into Emet-Selch’s mouth, then laughed, a shaky, delightful sound that they parted to enjoy, oddly enough.

Surprise and comfort in equal measure; two very strange things to be feeling here, now, when another roaring part of him was lost in a swathe of need that made him cling to the warrior for dear life. Eventually, their remaining garments were shed, and the warrior plied him with half-shallow kisses, working him with two fingers, the other hand soothing circles against his thigh.

Ready? he asked.

There was a sweat on the warrior’s brow and a flush on his cheeks, but he waited for an answer. Blue fires in old holders, a night sky with a thousand lights outside the windows, each one a home.

Emet-Selch caught the warrior’s bottom lip between his teeth then nodded, and when his legs were spread, he bit down on a moan.

A firm hand held his thigh steady, and gently, but with a low noise that’d wake the Twelve, the warrior slipped into him. He bowed his head. Emet-Selch reached with a boneless hand to cup his face. He needed to see-

They didn’t kiss, the warrior caught his breath and lifted his eyes, and smiled when Emet-Selch gave him a tap on the cheek.

“At your convenience, then,”

The first slow thrust shattered his control. They might have been in the void; this room, this bed, this alignment of their bodies, became the only point of reality.

Old dalliances crumbled - who could’ve ever matched this? Nobody , Emet-Selch latched onto the word, aware he was growing disatefully loud each time the warrior moved in him, but every roll of his hips brought him to the very edge of his pleasure over and over, a threat, a promise, a desperate keening. The warrior bowed his head into the crook of Emet-Selch’s neck and whispered to him where he lay, slack, clawing again at the warrior’s back with one hand and the other tightly bunched into his hair.

He gasped aloud when his leg was hooked over the warrior’s shoulder - a new brace of pleasure burning in his fingertips. Why did he feel like laughing? He let the sigh form a breathless request for more, and it was met adoringly, completely.

Nevertheless, it was a damned mistake to open his eyes. Emet-Selch tightened his grip and tensed and the warrior swore against his lips, brushing a brusque kiss there. His face, aglow in the little light of a handful of candles, was painted with bliss and the touch of an ache that furrowed his brows.

Another kiss came, then another, and the warrior shortened his thrusts with a decidedly smug air, hearing Emet-Selch’s breathless attempts to chide him.

The next time Emet-Selch opened his eyes was when the warrior shivered. He opened his mouth. A jolt went through him. Emet-Selch clapped a hand to the warrior’s neck, fumbling, breathing hard, then moved the touch to his lips.

“Hades,”

The warrior kissed his fingertips, a question in his eyes..

How many lifetimes between then and now? How did he reach between them?

Emet-Selch held the warrior’s face in his hands and heard his voice break. “My name.”

Eyes widened, a breath escaped him and for a moment he seemed to buckle. Then, he was kissing him, and whispered it against his lips. His real name. His true… 

“Please,”

It was there, it was alive. There was no need to beg.

The warrior said it again, he was moving again, fucking him with new intensity.

“ Please ,”

Emet-Selch couldn’t lift his arms to pull his lover close, but he didn’t need to, he came to him, bringing their bodies into flush alignment. A smile tickled his cheek. He moved hard and fast now, chasing that edge that they’d rush over, together. Together . It stung. Emet-Selch rode a bolt of the ache to hold the warrior’s face in his hand and will it to be so, to remember something , anything , to remember us .

He came with a moan he’d be mortified to recall on the “morrow”, but the warrior’s own release was no less beguiling, a moment later.

They kissed, gently. When they parted, Emet-Selch searched his eyes for a flicker of recognition, but it was not there. His heart threatened to sink in his chest, but was buoyed, nonetheless by what they’d shared, by what might yet be saved.

In truth, he felt quite unworthy of the adoration, but he could not look away, and realised he was smiling, too.

The air began to cool around them.

“Do you want some water?”

Emet-Selch blinked up at the man, perfectly stupefied. He did not know why he laughed.

“What?” the warrior whispered with all sincerity, smiling back.

EIGHT

“Persephone’s looking for you.”

For the love of-

Emet-Selch turned with a frown. Hythlodaeus had a preternatural ability for being where he shouldn’t and knowing what he shouldn’t, and it was always rather amusing when he wasn’t the target of it.

He turned his back and refocused on the flowering stems. Two red and three blue.

“Flowers? My word, is somebody in trouble?” Hythlodaeus chimed, joining him at the greenhouse table.

“That’s a matter for debate,” he muttered. Of course, there’d been a ceremony and a field of congratulations, and no doubt the word would’ve reached him by now, even so newly returned from his travels. What boded well for the many did so often sour the individual, however. A new title could, and given the current clime, probably would , change everything.

And why would I want that?

Emet-Selch let out a sigh and showed Hythlodaeus the bunch. Really, he was quite clueless about this sort of thing.

“What do you think?”

NINE

Emet Selch remembered a touch upon his back and a whispered question he’d replied to, groggily. The touch lingered beyond the words, and then it was gone. He slept for longer, not caring to move from their bed, until it occurred to him that he would not particularly like to be intruded on by a Viis.

Or a snooping Scion, no less.

He sat up rigidly and glanced here and there. The room was much as it was; the blinders closed, the ornaments on the table, a glass of water on the bedside.

Alas, the warrior was long gone - adventure waited for no man nor Ascian, it seemed!

He went rather gingerly to pick up his clothes and dress for the day. It was a strange ritual, and one had hadn’t performed in actuality for a rather morbidly long time. The robe was next and then the gloves, and pulling them into place he spared their closeness a mourning thought.

It didn’t last long. Ridiculous as it was, considering he was alone, he could not hold back a smile to recall the sound of his name. At last: at very long last.

Taking a moment to ascertain his whereabouts in this great, grim forest, Emet Selch readied himself to step beyond and follow the path of the hero.