Chapter Text
Sunlight filters softly through a tree’s branches, shining pleasantly onto the unmasked face of the woman sleeping under it. Her expression is peaceful, like she’s having a comforting dream. Emet-Selch can’t help but scowl when he comes across her. She was lying like this in public, in a park in the middle of Amaurot’s downtown, for crying out loud. He hurries over to her side, and begins nudging her shoulder with his foot, not even bending down to try and rouse her.
“Five more minutes…” She mumbles as she rolls over. Emet-Selch’s scowl furrows even deeper. Despite her theatrically drowsy movements and yawning, he can tell from her tone of voice that she’s not actually sleepy at all. Had she been awake the whole time, and simply pretending to nap? Or had he succeeded in fully rousing her, and she was simply trying to brush him off? Either way, she was giving him a headache with her nonsense.
“Are you trying to make a fool of the Convocation? One of its members should not be sleeping here, nor pretending to be, and certainly not without her mask on. Get up and put it on, Azem. Now.” He says gruffly. And with those words, the woman’s eyes flash open, her bright pink irises clear and looking right at him, confirming that she had not been sleepy.
“Boooooo.” She whines as she sits up and begins brushing fallen leaves off her cloak and mask. “You really are no fun, you know that, Hades?”
“Don’t call me that. Especially not in public.” It was as if she had no sense of propriety. Unbelievable. If he didn’t always keep a close eye on her like he does, he couldn’t imagine how much worse her reputation would be than it already was. While the person occupying the seat of Azem in the Convocation was certainly highly respected by mankind, she was also known as… something of an eccentric, to put it nicely. A reckless loon, to put it less nicely.
“Alright, alright, ‘honored Emet-Selch of the Convocation of Fourteen.’” She addresses him, a mischievous grin on her face as she adjusts her mask on. There’s affection in that grin, too, though, and he can’t help but smile wryly back. It was things like this mysterious charisma of hers that keep him from being unable to separate himself from her, as irritating as she may be.
He reaches a hand towards her to help pull her up from her sitting position on the ground, and Azem happily reaches back. He pulls her up with ease and she stands next to him now, but doesn’t let go of his hand, instead gripping it tightly. He feels like their hands fit together in a way that is incredibly natural, almost as if they had been made to do so. Not that he could ever bring himself to say something like that aloud.
“Do you ever feel like our hands fit together just right?” She hums and grips his tighter, and Emet-Selch looks at her in horror for a moment before attempting to collect himself. For a moment he feared that she had somehow read his mind, though he knows logically she cannot do something like that. No, knowing her, she had more likely than not simply been thinking the same thing by coincidence, and actually had the courage to voice it. How unreasonable of her.
He’s grateful that his mask can hide much of the blush on his face, but he knows she’s looking right at the part of his cheeks that are visible below it, so he hurriedly turns his face away so that she can’t stare at him. “I need to run a report over to the Bureau of the Architect. You may assist, if it’ll keep you from sleeping under more trees.”
“You’re going to see Hyth?” She says brightly. “Of course I wanna come!” She begins walking forward in the direction of the Bureau, their hands still held tightly.
As much as he may complain, being with Azem has a way of washing away all his stress, all the nagging commitments in his mind. No matter how long his life, so long as he has her in it, holding his hand and smiling at him despite his embarrassed and awkward blushing and protestations, he knew life on this star would be paradise for him.
Emet-Selch’s eyes flutter open to sights of the Crystarium. He realizes he must have fallen asleep perched on a high rooftop. How strange that he should dream of that memory, of her, now. Perhaps it was his subconscious chiding him for falling into the habit of napping wherever he pleased, despite being so frustrated with Azem in the past for the same behavior.
Or maybe it was that…. malformed, sundered creature’s fault that memories of Azem came back to him so vividly now. He couldn’t put a name to the emotions he felt when he saw that ‘hero’ – though only possessing half of Azem’s soul, it still shone with the same color. And she looked quite a bit like her unsundered incarnation. If you were to remove the horns and scales of her Au Ra heritage, then she would have the same face, the same color of hair, the same bright eyes as Azem, but simply be earlier into her adulthood than Azem had been at the time of the Final Days. Reminiscent of when he and Azem graduated from school, or when they first joined the Convocation.
The Warrior of Light – or he guesses it was of ‘Darkness’ now – her presence served to inspire equal longing and disgust in Emet-Selch. As much as it frustrated him to see her, it was because she possessed Azem’s soul that he had entertained the idea of working with her at all. He had always regretted the way things had ended between the two of them. It had been… unpleasant, especially compared to days like in the memory he had just dreamed of. If he could convince this sundered shard about the Rejoining, then… then he would be able to hope for Zodiark to summon an Azem who would be happy to see him, rather than one who still so thoroughly disapproved of the Convocation’s methods and plans.
He can hear the telltale creak of a large pair of doors opening and knows it must be the ones to the Crystal Tower – and he’s positioned just in view of them. Emet-Selch is at least glad he awoke at an opportune moment to observe whoever’s leaving. It was not a bad idea to keep an eye on what the so-called Crystal Exarch was up to, and who he was meeting with. The Exarch was a bit of a wild card, having been the force behind the wrench thrown into Emet-Selch’s carefully laid plans, and Emet needs to keep an eye on him. So he sits up and watches the doors with interest to see who emerges. And immediately he wishes that he hadn’t.
The Exarch is walking out, which isn’t a surprise. And Azem’s shard is with him. Which is not a surprise, either. When the Warrior of Darkness wasn’t out gallivanting around Norvrandt striking down sin eaters, she was with the Exarch… exceptionally often. As if she has made paying him a visit a regular part of her routine when she is in the Crystarium. And Emet-Selch had mulled over her reasons for doing so far more than he reasonably should have.
He can see them chatting, and though only part of the Exarch’s face is visible, as always, they’re both smiling. They seem to be enjoying one another’s company, as usual. Emet’s brow furrows.
They stop walking and talk some more at the bottom of the stairs to the Crystal Tower, and the Warrior of Darkness leans in a little, as though she’s trying to peer more closely at the Exarch’s face. Her expression isn’t one of mere curiosity, no, Emet-Selch can tell that much. There’s something like suspicion there, though it lacks in distrust or anger. He hypothesizes that she has a strong inkling of the Exarch’s identity, and she’s trying to confirm it, albeit in an incredibly unsubtle matter.
Perhaps she hadn’t even realized what she was doing until she had done it though, because she jumps back as soon as the Exarch quickly turns away to shield his face, and even from the rooftop Emet-Selch can hear her immediate, surprised apologies. Ridiculous.
It was incredibly likely that the Exarch is a denizen of the Source. His soul is much denser than any of the individuals of the First’s, which would not be a surprise for anyone seven times rejoined. Yet it is also denser than the Warrior of Light’s, or any of her Scion companions’. It was as though he had undergone one more Rejoining than the others, which wasn’t possible, or at least shouldn’t be.
But though Emet-Selch had much to ponder on what that meant, it didn’t mean that he knew exactly who the Exarch was. Or why and how Azem’s shard would know him if he was a denizen of the Source who had somehow made it here. The feeling of somehow being left out, not being privy to some secret past the two shared made him feel unreasonably irritated.
But most unreasonable of all his irritation came from what happens next as he watches the two. Even from his distance, Emet-Selch can see that the Exarch’s face is turning red with a blush under his hood as he awkwardly tugs it forward when he turns back to her. He says something to her, and she laughs a little awkwardly, pink tinging her own cheeks as well. And she smiles at the Exarch.
Emet-Selch blinks, and for a moment the scene before him changes, though he knows it’s only his imagination. For a second he can see Azem, fully herself, with the exact same expression the Warrior of Darkness had. And rather than the Exarch blushing and pulling a hood up to bashfully avoid her gaze, Emet-Selch sees his younger self making the same motions, though more irritably than the Exarch does. He and Azem had exchanges that went that way far, far too many times to count. Memories that seemed so far away before had rushed forward into Emet-Selch’s mind when he witnessed a similar scene play out between the Warrior of Darkness and the Crystal Exarch. And he hates this.
The spell is broken, thankfully or not, when the Exarch moves in a most un-Emet-like fashion. He bows deeply to her and chivalrously reaches an arm out as if to invite her to continue their walk, moving past her little moment of curiosity. It reminds Emet-Selch a bit of the way lords often try to treat the ladies they have taken an interest in, as he has seen many a time among the nobility of the myriad nations he helped build, and even acted out himself in some of his previous attempts at finding meaning in these sundered lives when taking lovers.
He wonders if the Exarch fancies himself to be a prince, or knight in shining armor to her. The Exarch may hold the title of lord in the Crystarium, but to Emet it seemed like he was a novice actor trying too hard to play the part, like he wasn’t truly confident in the gestures. A poor performance indeed.
Had Emet tried anything like the Exarch’s actions back in the days of old, even had he executed them better than the Exarch does, Azem would have most certainly laughed loudly at him, and never let him live it down. She would have found someone treating her, an accomplished mage and warrior in her own right, like a lovestruck maiden downright ridiculous. And she’d say that he should stop trying so hard to be overly proper and high-and-mighty and whatever else, teasing him as always.
Part of him hopes that the Warrior of Darkness will respond in the same way. She is, after all, an accomplished warrior among her kind, and not some common, daydreaming maiden. She and Azem certainly do have that much in common, at least. And seeing a part of her that reminds him of Azem and rebukes the Exarch would be a comfort, as much as Emet-Selch does not want to admit it. But she doesn’t laugh at the Exarch.
The pink on her cheeks spreads across more of her face, and she smiles more shyly at him, nodding before they begin walking together again. She seemed to like the gesture. She had been… flustered by the Exarch. What a sickeningly sweet blossoming romance the two shared.
He brings a hand to his forehead, not looking at the two anymore, allowing himself to give into the grief that overwhelms him with shaky breaths. He hates this, the pain at her loss, seeing her again as someone else entirely, and seeing her look at someone else just like Azem had at him. Sundered though the pair might both be, what could she possibly see in him? In any malformed, broken creature? Was something like that, this Exarch, this entire broken world really preferrable to him, to the paradise they had once lived in together? Had Azem truly come to hate him so thoroughly that this was the inevitable outcome?
No. It could only be because the shard didn’t really understand yet. What was at stake. What she had lost, what she was giving up. That was what made it even more important that he try and work with her. He needed to try and correct things while he knew he had this chance. For if this attempt did not work, he was convinced no future ones would, if there even were any future chances for cooperation.
Emet-Selch would bide his time. Even if it meant watching her grow closer and closer to this Exarch, go out of her way to spend time with him, be forced to watch the gentle way that he treats her in return, and how his every action seems obsessed with her happiness and comfort. It was just fractured beings playing at half-formed emotions they couldn’t truly understand the breadth of. Like a pair of children playing house together, blissfully unaware of what the original form of the thing they were imitating was like.
Emet-Selch would simply remove the Exarch if he proved to be a considerable threat to the Rejoining, and continue observing the situation and probing his secrets until then. And when he had Azem again, everything would go back to the way it was before. Whether or not the Warrior of Darkness can prove herself equal to Azem by containing the light of the remaining Lightwardens, it would be the same either way. She’d come back to him in the end, either by joining him, or being struck down and having her soul return to the lifestream to witness the remaining Rejoinings in a new life where she did not remember him, nor the Crystal Exarch, until her soul became fully Azem's again. Everyone from his past would return to Emet-Selch. He’d make sure of it.