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It is late, and the Warrior sits in her assigned room in Elpis, brooding over the events of the day. It’s a good thing Meteion isn’t nearby, she muses bitterly, as she’s sure she’d throw the poor empath into a tailspin with her current mood.
All things considered, it is a miracle that anyone believes her story at all. It is quite a tale, after all. But Emet-Selch’s reaction had stung. She is in the midst of wondering if Hythlodaeus had managed to catch up to him and calm him down eventually, when she hears a demanding rap at the door.
She opens it to find Emet-Selch himself towering over her, looking every bit as irritable as he had before he’d stormed off that morning.
“I wish to speak with you,” he bites out. It is more a demand than a request. The Warrior steps to the side to allow him in, and moves past her into the room before she shuts the door.
“What do you want to discuss?” she starts cautiously.
“I want to know what else you’re hiding from me.” He crosses his arms and straightens to his full height, looking every bit the dour bureaucrat he is in this time and place.
“It’s hard to believe you have anything more damning than what you’ve already told us, so out with it. What aren’t you telling me?”
The Warrior is taken aback. There is much she is withholding, yes. Her memory supplies flashes of encounters—a gloved hand muffling her cries as she is pressed against a wall in a dark Crystarium alleyway; treacherously tender lips along her shoulder followed by teeth; a final desperate and furious kiss under the depths of the ocean in an echo of a dead city-- but these are not memories to share. She had certainly left them out of her explanation.
It is her turn to cross her arms defensively. “I don’t know why you’d care to ask, considering you say you don’t believe me in the first place. Perhaps you buy into Hythlodaeus’ earlier theory that I’m Azem’s familiar come to toy with you and you’re trying to catch me in a lie?”
Emet-Selch scoffs derisively at this. “That was always a ridiculous notion. It is as I said before. If Azem wished to be here, she would be here. Despite the color of—”
“You lot are always going on about the color of my soul,” she interrupts, voice crackling with irritation. “What does that even mean? Describe it to me. Is it really so similar to this Azem of yours?”
He stiffens. “She is not…” he cuts himself off with a cluck of his tongue. Instead of continuing, he fixes his gaze intently on the Warrior. She finds herself fascinated as she sees his focus shift, almost as though he is trying to look at something extremely far away.
“The hue is remarkably similar, faded as it is. That would be explained by this ‘sundering’ you describe, I suppose. But it’s not identical, no. This is very difficult to describe to someone without Sight, but… hers is the brilliant orange of a fire at full force. Yours is a shade darker. Quieter, somehow.”
His brow furrows for a moment, and then his attention shifts back to the Warrior sitting in front of him. He looks almost uncomfortable.
“There is something else. Intertwined, there are the faintest traces of—of me. My aether.” Emet-Selch steps closer, and she has to fight the urge to close the gap between them. He is handsome in the low light of the cabin, and he is so achingly familiar to her. His tone is low as he continues, “What was I to you in this past of yours? This future of mine?”
She is lost, grasping about for excuses. How is she to invent a convincing lie when she has no idea how this troublesome Sight of his even works?
“Well,” she stammers, “if you are starting to believe my story, it follows that I am a shard of Azem. If you two are—”
He cuts her off sharply, “Azem and I are dear friends. Nothing so intimate as what I see here.”
“Perhaps in the future, then.”
“No. If Azem wished to have me, she would have me,” he asserts in a hollow voice. There is no room for argument in his tone.
The Warrior realizes she has been backed into a corner, and so decides to tell him the truth rather than continue this dance when she is clearly outmaneuvered.
“We were enemies,” she breathes. “Lovers. Both and neither.”
Emet-Selch’s face contorts into a sneer. “What could have drawn you to me? Your tale paints me to be quite the villain. Tell me hero,” his voice dipping into something she more easily recognizes now, the lilting croon nearly snapping her back in time to the First, “Why in the world would you have deigned to lay with the enemy?”
She draws an unsteady breath, trying to meet his gaze dispassionately. “You approached me first. I wanted what you were offering.”
“And what was I offering?” he whispers.
“A connection. Pleasure.” She huffs a dry laugh, devoid of mirth. “Cruelty. You were not a kind man when I knew you. I did not want kindness.”
He falls silent for several long moments at this, her words hanging heavy in the air between them. She is casting about for a way to either continue or end the conversation when she feels a slow spread of warmth deep in her chest, followed by a startling pang of pure arousal. The sensation of being caressed and soothed overwhelms her, and she snaps her eyes up to Emet-Selch. He is staring at her with fiery intent.
“What are you doing?” she gasps out.
He moves even closer. “The same thing you have been doing since this conversation began, my dear. Your aether has been reaching out to mine quite insistently. Very distracting. You didn’t even realize, did you?”
Her answer is cut off in a strangled moan at the sensation of liquid warmth trailing up and down the length of her body.
“If your story is true, so very much was taken from you. Even the awareness of your own aether. I can see why I may have been so desperate to restore the world to what it once was,” he murmurs, reaching a hand to lightly trace the side of her neck and down her collarbone. “And I can see why I may have sought you out. I’ve always held a weakness for strength and beauty woven together.” He smiles then, and it holds a predatory quality. “I have also been known to have a cruel streak.”
He slowly circles to stand behind her, chest barely grazing the Warrior’s back as he leans down to her ear. “You wanted me then. What if I were to make you a similar offer now?”
This is a terrible idea. But the Warrior is powerless to refuse, not when she has been filled with confused longing ever since that climactic fight in the ghostly recreation of Amaurot.
“Gods, yes. Please, Emet-Selch,” she breathes, allowing herself to lean back into his arms.
His response is swift and rough. One hand fists in her hair and pulls it back to expose her neck, while the other snakes around her waist to draw her flush against his body. Teeth graze against her too sharply, followed by the soothing swipe of his tongue. She is ablaze with need, grinding herself back against his length and giving a breathy moan at the continued languid caress of his aether swirling against hers.
He urges her forward until she is crowded against the door. “Hands on the frame,” he growls, “and bend over.”
She is all too eager to comply.
He hikes up her robes and deftly slips the waistband of her trousers down, just enough to expose her to his molten gaze. When he drags his fingers through her dripping folds, he chuckles darkly as the Warrior bites back a whine at his teasing.
“So wet for me already. But I’m not sure you’ve quite earned my full attention yet, dear.” His voice is warm and inviting, and he presses himself flush against her back so he can give a playful nip at her ear. She can feel his cock resting against her rear, frustratingly away from where she needs him.
“I did so love hearing you plead in that pretty little voice of yours. Why don’t you tell me exactly what it is you want from me?” he purrs, "and do try and make it convincing.”
The Warrior finds herself completely devoid of pride in this moment, and does not hesitate. It has been so long, so very long since she has last felt him. And here he is, sounding so much like she remembers. She is helpless to resist this temptation.
She cants her head back to catch his attention, lowering her eyes invitingly. “Oh, Emet-Selch. Please, please ride me as hard and fast as you can. Use me.”
“Oh my, that was certainly persuasive,” he rumbles, and she feels him line the head of his cock up with her entrance. But instead of slamming into her as she asked, he eases in slowly, making her feel the drag against her walls as he sets an agonizingly relaxed pace. With each stroke he fully withdraws and penetrates her again, and she gasps with each rock of his hips. “I shall consider your request. But right now I wish to take my time with you.”
His fingers slip over her front to circle in time with his rhythm and she finds herself being driven closer and closer to the edge. She whimpers and removes a hand from the frame to reach back for him, and in an instant finds herself slammed fully against the door with both wrists locked in his firm grasp.
“Ah, ah, not very good at following orders are you?” He punctuates this with a brutal thrust, and then another, causing her to give a rather undignified yelp. Her pleasure borders deliciously on pain as he presses her more firmly against the door and rides her faster.
“But you are good at taking me, aren’t you?" He hisses before withdrawing and stepping back entirely.
She starts to move, then freezes upon realizing she has not been given permission to do so. Instead she waits, trembling with need.
The smug pleasure in his voice is intoxicating as he praises her, “That’s a good girl. You’re learning. Perhaps you’ve earned a small reward.” His hands are at her sides then, urging her to turn to face him. “On the bed now, and get out of these troublesome robes.”
She scrambles to follow his directions, as he also casts aside his robes and kneels before where she lies on the mattress. Before she can fully get her bearings, all rational thought is driven out of her as he easily sinks two fingers into her warmth straight to the knuckle, and he licks a hot stripe across her clit.
More and more, he becomes her Emet-Selch, the one she knew so well, who brought her such pleasure and such pain and who she misses with such a festering intensity. As she is driven higher on his clever tongue, she is no longer in Elpis but instead back at the Pendants on the First. As she crests, she calls out for him in a tremulous voice, “Hades!”
Emet-Selch retreats from her instantly, horrified, furious. “Who told you that name?”
“You did,” she says simply, struggling to regain her composure after coming down from her peak.
The color drains from his face. “In the future,” he breathes. “After… no, it cannot be true. You do not know me.” His expression hardens.
He draws to his full height and with a snap of his fingers, they are both fully dressed and he has become a stranger again. The Warrior stares at him from where she is still sprawled on the bed, incredulous.
“I must go.” He hovers on the edge of continuing further, but instead conjures a portal and steps through it without another word.
The Warrior allows herself to collapse fully onto the mattress then. The past, present and future swirl together, and she is almost nauseous trying to sort through it all. Under the light of a moon from a world that is both hers and not, she tries to tamp down her grief for a man who is both alive and dead, and sleep.