Chapter Text
Elidibus is better than Emet-Selch at remaining hidden, Altruoix quickly finds.
It's such an incongruous thing, he thinks, upon realization that the man draped in Ardbert was actively observing him. Emet-Selch fit in so much easier into a crowd, and yet--
The second, more awful, realization hits then, that Emet-Selch had, in truth, revealed himself deliberately to Altruoix.
He'd wanted to be found. Wanted desperately to be noticed, clinging to that scrap of final hope that perhaps Altruoix would turn, his eyes meeting the ascian's with a smile on his face and a long forgotten name slipping from his tongue.
He'd never had a chance. Altruoix had fallen, light bleeding from his splintering soul and so too had Emet-Selch's heart finally broken.
Every opportunity, every hint, every rustle of robes and quiet chuckle that had made the Warrior spin 'round, weapon ready.
Each shared touch, each foreign syllable from kiss-torn lips.
Spires gleaming in the murk from the light of sputtering lamps.
He'd wanted Altruoix so badly to understand. So badly to know .
Muscle memory carries him through his final combat exercises this night as his mind spirals downward. Like a moth he cannot help but light himself aflame in the regrets that burn a constant votive. By the time he drags himself away the dummy is in pieces, each distracted spike hitting it harder and harder until he's attacking open air.
From the second floor Elidibus still watches. What must the ascian think of him?
Shattered, scattered kindling lies at his feet.
So do Nabriales, Igeyorhm, Lahabrea, Emet-Selch.
Long fingers press delicately to his mouth. Fighting the tide of rising bile he thinks hard of Musosai, forcing his mind blank, centered - and thank the gods, by the old man's grace the choral screams scatter, blending back into static noise.
Not daring to yet look up he instead wishes desperately that he wasn't cut off from the comforting promise of his always-open tab at the Wandering Stairs by the one person he absolutely may not face in this state.
But then, he's made it practically his specialty to do impossible things, hasn't he?
He drops the training blade, looks up at the wrought iron stairs. Elidibus doesn't bother to hide himself when their eyes meet.
Ardbert's lids are dropped low, mouth curve down in a crescent. It's a stare of contempt - or perhaps, contemplation.
Altruoix forces one foot to move, then the other, resolve hardening as scenarios play through his head, possibilities narrowed and parameters aligning.
He is unarmed. Elidibus is not.
Still, he is unlikely to be attacked here. The ascian has had plenty of opportunity to strike, yet has not.
The parts they lead will lead them to a conflict inevitable - but not tonight.
Not yet.
He passes Elidibus. Lets out an anxious breath.
Then stops.
From the corner of his eye, borrowed flesh stirs. Lips move to deliver sound, a hand raised into a fist, awaiting his touch--
Don’t make a choice that leaves you alone.
Damn his sentimentality. Damn this foolish notion. Damn him, damn him, just go to the stairs, move, please .
With no one but himself to hear, no one but himself to blame, traitorous mind and body act as one. A foreign curse passes Elidibus, bounces off blue-flecked flagstones.
Digging into a coat pocket Altruoix procures a small bottle. Uncaps it. Throws the contents back.
Hells. He can’t escape Ardbert even now - even when it’s a simulacrum. His voice rings in his ears, resonates in his soul.
“I’d, ah, ask you if you wanted something, but…” He leans against the railing, turning the bottle upside down and shaking it for emphasis. “Sorry. I’m not good at any of this.”
Fast, but always a moment too late. Smart, but kept hopelessly ignorant. Strong, but only used as a bludgeon.
“Is there a reason you are here?” Elidibus’s hostility scrapes at the edges of memory, leaving red welts across his fractured psyche. Remember Us.
“Could ask you the same thing.” Altruoix’s already opening a second container - this time, a flask. “Was I supposed to just let you stare at me all night? Turn my back to you, so you could take me out?”
Elidibus says nothing, merely looking on as the Warrior gets drunker, slumps a little lower. Clearly he’s been chosen for his battle prowess, not an ability to cope. He lets the scars show, bare arms gnarled in spirals while his countenance flutters in distress. There's nothing to prove to the last Unsundered. No expectations to be met.
“...Might be easier if I did, though.”
As he finishes the flask Altruoix finally gives his body respite from his earlier exertions. Allowing himself to slide down to a sitting position he isn’t looking at Elidibus anymore, content instead to watch the moon rise as the familiar fuzz takes his mind.
“Nice, even.”
Quickly, quietly. Before he could think too much of what he’d leave behind, before he could form regrets for things undone.
Just him here, in this moment, staring at the sky as he drifts away.
Perhaps Emet-Selch would be cross at him. But he thinks the man would understand.
It’s an all-too-brief fancy. People like him don’t get to go out gently into the night. They fight until they have no strength to stand, die choking as their lungs fill with blood, as their viscera spills across a battlefield. As their head rolls from an executioner’s blade.
And if it weren’t so, would Hydaelyn allow him any other way?
“I wouldn’t deserve the kindness.”
Elidibus holds no love for him. They both know he does little more than wetwork for a glorified primal. Such forgiveness or mercy is far beyond him.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try, if only to assuage his crippling guilt for just a moment.
“No.” The disdain is evident on Elidibus’s face. This entire farce is below him. “You would not.”
“Didn’t deserve it when Emet-Selch let me grace his bed, either. Or when even at the end, in Amaurot--”
“Do not presume,” Elidibus’s voice is clearly pained, “to speak of his motives, or his transgress--”
“He made it for me, you know.” The words tumble out before he can stop himself. It's been on his mind all night from the moment he'd perceived the Emissary. “So I had someplace to turn. Someplace comfortable.”
Someplace familiar.
Ardbert’s borrowed jaw clenches.
All for him. All for him. All for him.
Look, learn, and remember.
“He erred because he loved me.”
Drawing up his legs Altruoix’s face finally crumples, eyes wide and wet as tears finally spill down his cheeks. He buries his face in his knees, form trembling as he sobs, long and breathy and low.
He hadn’t known what else to do. He still doesn’t. The parts they play will lead to conflict inevitable but every fiber of his being, every piece of his rejoined soul will be utterly undone if he must stay this course.
He cannot slay Elidibus. Cannot end the ascians.
But neither can he deviate, can he? He must protect this world, too. In the morning, Ryne and Gaia will wake up and go for coffee biscuits. The Scions will rise, working and waiting to go home. This world, the source, the fate of them all rests upon his fulcrum.
This is one impossible task he cannot overcome - not as things are now.
Above him Elidibus stands, shadowless and still. What few guises of humanity he’s maintained have dropped as he regards Altruoix from the corners of his eyes. He catalogs the Warrior’s new info, brow furrowed as if working through a particularly complicated puzzle.
Altruoix’s sobs have long quieted to whimpers when he finally moves. With an almost agonizing slowness Elidibus undoes Ardbert’s gauntlets, leaving his hands bare. Brushing back loose strands of silver he grabs ahold of Altruoix’s chin, turns it towards him to regard gold rimmed in blotched red, smearing a thumb through tear tracks still damp.
“Permit me this indulgence,” he says, as violet wreathes him in glory, the mundane smothered beneath the surging being playing at mortal finally revealed. Darkness curls at the edge of Altruoix’s consciousness, serpents coiling to strike. He doesn’t fight back when they do.
Aether spirals from outstretched fingertips as he eagerly explains to his audience of one what he knows. What he understands , as they look on in awe--
<<Go home.>> Chimes click in consternation as his glorified babysitter stands, arms crossed in his office. <<He’s waiting for you - and before you ask, I will know if you’ve shacked up in Lahabrea’s office--
<<You can't.>>
The petulance does little to hide the waver in his voice, fingers stained with ink smudging the cowl pulled low with the force with which he grabs it. <<It's Wrong, the results are!-->>
<<--And what else would you have me do? We are out of time. This is the only way.>> Maddeningly calm, even now. As if Elidibus didn't understand how he worked, as if he was ignorant of the dangers of disregarding his counsel! He wasn't some halfwit student at the Akademia, playing devil's advocate with their concept, he was their Shepherd and Elidibus his friend! He…
The petulance turns heated, hands weaving through the air and aether to draw, to demonstrate. Mayhaps if he rewords it, shows it in a slightly different way, he can make him understand. But before he even starts Elidibus waves it away with a hand of his own.
There's a shriek of rage and grief as Euclid sees red. He grabs those white robes once more, and the man is shaken to and fro. It lasts only a moment - with a grace worthy of his station Elidibus breaks free, throwing Euclid backwards into his desk and scattering the papers stacked there.
The shock of form hitting wood sends him back to sense. He leans on the desk, panting between hiccups.
<<---------.>> Deep fatigue colors his words. He's tried so hard. He's told them again and again and again. Said it, screamed it - he doesn't know what else to do anymore except beg for it. <<Please. Just-- you can't .>>
<< ---m .>> Euclid's jaw clicks shut. He wipes his face, leaving small smears of grey beneath his eyes.
<<You have no authority over my station, nor any matters concerning my person.>> Moonlight glints harshly from behind his mask. <<You would do well to remember your position, its obligations - and its limits .>>
Euclid does not try to make him stay when he turns to exit.
<<You are expected at our next meeting. Until then.>>
In his empty office, Euclid curls beneath his robes and keens a funeral dirge.
Altruoix comes to with his head in Ardbert’s - no, Elidibus’s - lap. His touch has turned gentle but unsure, one hand hovering above Altruoix’s chest. So the Warrior pulls it down, letting it feel the steady thrum of his heart.
“You were dear to him.” It’s not phrased as a question, so he doesn’t expect an answer - and doesn’t get one. “You must have been.”
The weight of who Elidibus is, what Elidibus is sits so much heavier than the mere hand upon him would suggest. In his woeful incompleteness Altruoix struggles to conceptualize the utter horror of what it had meant to who he was Before.
But if he concentrates, he can pick out fragments of it, like shrapnel embedded in his soul.
They are both dead men, now. Dead and playing in the ashes of their world until the curtain falls upon it, destined to clash through no faults of their own.
The Dark that Is Elidibus ripples. It touches Altruoix still, oil streaked across the pond of his being. Perhaps it’s an offering. Perhaps just an oversight. It doesn’t matter. Altruoix rises from the depths, extends a hand.
“You still are.” Mouthed, near inaudible. His hand holds the darkness in his grip.
He’d tried to run away before, to carve his own path away from what was set for him. It’d failed miserably. He hadn’t known of the chain wrapped ‘round his arms, entangling his feet.
It’s left him perilously close to true death, a spirit sapped of the will to carry on. He’s so tired of bloodletting, tired of wars. Tired of fighting for a god that he’d never liked in the first place.
But he is not yet empty. Elidibus looks down at him with the wrong eyes and the wrong face and the absolute indignity of what they’ve endured spurs Altruoix on more than any tempering could.
With one final burst of stubbornness, he feels the chains slip.
They’ll run together, this time. Escape for good, no matter what.
“For those we can yet save.”
The hold is returned. The Dark gives a tentative squeeze. They plunge beneath the surface.
Altruoix remains on the Crystarium’s upper level long after Elidibus takes his leave, clutching that unspoken promise. A half-remembered name dances starlight across his tongue. The rush of those few foreign syllables leaves him giddy, despite no less uncertainties than before.
What do the dead have to fear from the future?
He would know what to do, when the time was right. He is sure of it.
First light comes, and for once Altruoix greets it - with a smile.