Chapter Text
Eventide.
The lateness of the hour is like an old friend.
Unwanted. Unneeded. And yet inspiring fondness all the same. Baleful eyes awaken in the half-hearted darkness that is and will always be Rabanastre’s Lowtown. Vayne blinks, the insignificant gesture as insignificant as it can be. And yet he knows, as he has for the last eight months, he will not be getting back to sleep so easily.
It’s tempting to blame his surroundings.
He sleeps oddly. He dreams oddly.
There’s no sun to greeting him in the morning. There’s no moon to encourage him to sleep at night. All of Lowtown is dark, day or night, blanketed in the metal-born twilight that divides the city on high from the city below.
The second city murmurs and quakes with activity, the nocturnal unfortunates that populate the alleys and stores go about their business. Loudly. His flat, all four overpriced walls of it, is worthless in keeping the sounds out. He hears everything. The young mother downstairs and her wailing babe. The pair of prostitutes and their line of eager Archadian tourist customers next door. Women fighting outside, their back-and-forth barbs ending in laughter. Men setting out laundry, drinking and sighing.
Bits and pieces of daily and nightly conversations winds up into his ear, happily making his brain abuzz with useless information.
But truly, it is not the idle chatter nor worthless gossip that is useless. Everything is relevant for his plan, for his plots to come to fruition. It is him. Vayne. He cannot function with precision should he be stripped free from the demands of the day. In Lowtown, in bed, he becomes rather single-minded. Thoughts of night and day have no purpose for when he isn’t out and bout, trading information as an nation-less informant, but it does so when he is in bed.
When he awakes with a lover.
His lover.
Galbana.
The word ‘lover’ itself is not strong enough to convey his own carnal stirrings nor his admiration for the man beside him. The beloved that has snared his heart as of late. Sentimentality is not a trait he should be nursing. And yet and still, his heart softens at the sight. The simplicity of it all. To be Novus, merely a man, and to be with, his, Galbana.
The late hour, it casts a dream-like pall over his actions and his thoughts.
Galbana is the cause of it, no doubt. By challenging his resolve, faith and duty to his wish to set free Man and rule all of Ivalice. To bring about a future where his brother, his pure-hearted Larsa, could be safe to remain as he is. Pure. Forthright in his convictions. However, in the night, in the intestines of a metal city, such future is no different than a daydream. Too intangible in this dreary, humid gloom to ever be.
It has no place in this eternal twilight while Galbana, seductress and judge, slumbers nearby.
The thief’s silver-struck hair gleams under the faint emerald bleached light invading through the threadbare curtains. It spills out, like waves of shallow moonlight upon the sand, Vayne unraveling the cloth-band holding it in place before taking in a handful to smell.
Galbana’s hair is harsh between his fingers, bristle-like and calming.
Months’ worth of care is slowly making a dent into the thief’s poor care of his own locks. But Vayne still favors the coarser strands. It helps him remember than Galbana is real and he is awake and this isn’t a dream itself. A sweet delusion to torment him. The jasmine spice he washed into the roots greets him along with the other scents; metal, smoke, sand-dune grass, and oddly enough, freshly baked bread.
Where does his little thief go when he is not making mischief and entangling Novus into his sheets?
Galbana unconsciously leans into his open palm, enticing lips curving into a sleepy smile.
Again, the thief lures him, tests him.
Vayne rests his head against his lover and breathes. His lungs move. His blood rushes through his veins. But clarity does not comes to him. Nor common sense. All he can do is breath, taking in all of Galbana. His thievery, his frivolousness, his unique way of seeing the world. Of course, Galbana can have those thoughts. Do those things. He does not have a empire a rule nor a war to survive. Neither does Novus, and that thought, that thought alone. It scares him. It tempts him. The great river Nabria is nowhere nearby but Vayne is drowning, willingly drowning to lay with his destruction.
It wouldn’t be hard for Vayne, son of Archadia, to vanish. Not truly. Perhaps, there would be an outroar in his honor but many eyes would turn to Larsa and the senate. And for his treason, Vayne’s abandonment of his people, the world would burn. Little Larsa isn’t strong enough to fend off the flames of war. Father is weak. The senate, greedy fools. A few of the Judges show promise but their loyalty must be proven, cemented in place. And there is Dr. Cid and Venat.
Too many sins and too many souls are bound around his neck.
Even to breath like this, here, is choking, stifling.
And he loves it very much.
Time passes. It has to. Vayne isn’t trapped in a moment of time. He knows not the seconds or minutes or hours he’s spending staring and breathing. Drowning enthralled like a sailor to a siren. Desertion is only here. Death is only here. He knows this but still he lingers, kisses and loves something that can never be his. Galbana tucks into his war-mongering limbs and lays blissfully in rest, unconcerned that Vayne could kill him in a fit of madness.
Of course, he wouldn’t be.
Vayne isn't here. Novus is the only one with a lover in the night.