Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Haurchefant says your name like a sigh in his sleep.

It’s all reverence like the way the Ishgardian’s whisper Halone’s name. A silent worship in the still, cold air, and even though you were shivering moments ago, there is not a better place that you can think to be. 

Ishgard and it’s many faces have pushed themselves into your heart like needles, and now you worry that if you were to lose even one, you would never recover. 

But the needles only embed themselves deeper as Haurcefant’s long frame curls around you, the heat of his breath fettering against your cheek, his hands seeking yours so he can press soft kisses to the very tips of your fingers. 

He is asleep, his expression soft and vulnerable, lips slightly parted only to curl at the corners when you scoot closer. 

You don’t close your eyes in fear of something, but the fear dissipates in the face of his smile. In the face of him. 

Pressing your brow against his chest, you breathe in deeply. He smells like the soft crackle of fire and snow and metal, but there’s a hint of vanilla beneath it all. A hint of your soap that he uses when he misses you. 

You try to remember where you were gone for him to miss you this much. The last time he did this you’d been gone for months, but your memories blur together, ending and beginning in odd, misty places. 

Absently, you press a kiss to the scar on his shoulder, brow furrowing when you pull back and see another on his chest. Your hands tighten around his, your body instinctively working to get as close as possible as your breath hitches in your throat. 

You don’t remember where that scar came from. You don’t remember it being there. Yet, your vision flashes with Haurchefant stepping in front of you, shield upraised. 

Your eyes burn with unshed tears and you bury your head into the side of the neck, struggling to commit every single curve of his body to your memory. The way your legs tangle. The arm beneath your head and his fingers tangled in your hair. The way your head fits in the crook of his neck or how he presses soft kisses to wherever he can in his sleep. Your fingertips when he grabs your hand. Your brow. Your shoulder when you turn over. 

But tonight you don’t turn over because the thought of not being able to see him feels like committing yourself to a slow bleed out. 

And you think, maybe, some part of him knows why because when his eyes flutter open there’s a deep sadness pooling into the blue, threatening to swallow everything. 

“Haurchefant…” you breathe, and the sadness is gone as his hand moves from yours to cup your cheek and press a long, lingering kiss against your lips. 

He is warm and cold at the same time, but his lips slide against yours like a puzzle sliding into place, staunching the blood leaking from your chest. 

When did it start leaking? 

“Dear heart,” he says, kissing her nose. “You look lovely.” 

You smile, forgetting, for a moment, that your chest is bleeding, and slowly push the soft locks of hair from his face so you can look into his eyes, tracing the curve of his nose with your thumb. “And you look lovelier.” 

He chuckles softly as you wind blue locks of hair around your fingers, peering up at him through your lashes. He has always been all angles, but those angles have always fit you perfectly. Your fingers drift from his nose towards his ears, tracing the curve to the point, and he closes his eyes, sighing through his nose as if he cannot imagine a better place to be. 

Beneath the soft, morning light, you hear the soft crackling of logs, feel the sheets tangle around you in a way that is just slightly off though you can’t put your finger on why. His fingers brush against your cheek, and when you blink there’s an image of him burned into the back of your eyelids. Blood leaking from the side of his mouth. 

You startle but Haurchefant only holds you tighter, a silent misplaced plea in the gloom. There’s something you’re supposed to understand, but it all flies over your head, like light bending to the shadows. 

“Don’t leave,” he says, but you weren’t planning to. It’s the last thing on your mind even if there’s not much left. “I love you.” 

There’s something in the way the confession slips from his lips that leaves you someplace between salvation and damnation. It is the way he regards you through his lashes, cheeks hollow, and his expression softened by shadows, his hair tangled by your fingers and the bed. 

You move to kiss him, unable to simply stare, and closing your eyes is a challenge because how could you look anywhere else when Haurchefant is right here. 

It feels like the first time you’ve seen him in a long time. It feels like the first time you’ve felt his tongue against yours, the touch soft and feather-like, and the sweet taste of chocolate swirling into your kiss like knots forming, pulled taut by unseen hands. 

You move on top of him, savoring the way his hands find your hips, anchoring you to him as your hair spills against the blue backdrop of his. Pulling away, you take a moment to admire the sleepy sky against the white pillow. Your noses brush together and Haurchefant smiles. 

“I always wanted to hold you like this,” he tells you. 

You smile and think of all the times he has told you this. How many times have the two of you found your way into the same bed? Sparring sessions ending in quick, heated breaths. Words of admiration whispered into the crooks of your skin. 

He whispers them now. He tells you about the time he struggled against ten of his men to keep from rushing to your side. He never understands why the Scions send you away as they do. How can they stand to see you off alone? 

And you intertwine your fingers as he speaks. You think that he looks so beautiful when he’s so resolute. 

His lips meet the crook of your neck as he switches between pressing kisses to soft skin and whispering more promises. “I was so shocked to see you with that woman, dearest heart.” 

“But you didn’t question me,” you answer fondly, thinking of Ysayle. 

There’s a shade of sadness over her image. 

You don’t know why. 

“I never would.” And there is such devotion in his eyes that you feel like he might swallow you whole and you think you’d want him too so that you could curl around his heart in the shadow of space he’s made for you there. 

You kiss and it feels like fire the fire crackling over the logs. Long and languid and when he twitches against you, a current of warmth spreads from your center out. Your limbs grow heavier. Everything is slow and decadent beginning from the subtle movement of your lips and ending in the way his hands slowly slip beneath your silken clothes. 

His thumb flicks over your nipple. You arch back as his hand cups your breast, softly caressing as your breath hitches in your throat. 

I love you. The words rise in your head, unbidden. The hollow truth ringing through you as his hand brushes against your core, his fingers working decadent circles against you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

You lean into him, breathing hard as he whispers your name. Tells you how beautiful you are. Pulls moans from your mouth with each movement of his calloused fingers. The words in your head slur together. A refrain. I love you. I love you. I loveyouiloveyouiloveyou. 

He likes it when you come undone for him. He likes seeing the tension relax from your face, and he likes the spark in your eye when the pleasure crescendos and the song finishes. Hair sticks to your forehead as you shove him down, taking his length in your hand to lower yourself on him. 

And you like the way his eyes widen as if he still can’t believe you choose him. Again and again. 

Your eyes water as the song starts anew and Haurchefant pulls you into a kiss, soft and sweet. As you drift apart, he sees the odd look in your eyes and then it’s mirrored in his as if he knows. His arms wrap around you and he flips you onto your back so that he’s on top, propped up on his forearms so he can kiss you as his hips continue to rock against yours in long, deep strokes that leave you mewling, fingers digging desperately into his back. 

He’s solid and real and warm and something is dreadfully wrong because the refrain in your head is changing. 

I miss you. It says. Over and over again as if each breath Haurchefant steals from you is laced with it. I miss you I miss you I miss you. 

“Haurchefant,” you whine. 

“I know,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to your lips and then to your shoulder. “I know, my heart, I know.”

Your back arches beneath his touch, desperate to get even closer. There is a needle in your heart being slowly removed and you fear that it is the biggest one. It hurts. It hurts. And the world is shifting around you as Haurchefant’s cheeks turn red, the softness in his expression turning to vulnerability as you both fall together, succumbing to pleasure that rocks through you like a wave. 

Everything between the two of you has always been mirrored. It starts with admiration. Then love and lust. And the love only grows. Haurchefant is your other half. The person always waiting for you when you round the corner with open arms. You can’t even count the number of times you’ve wandered Ishgard looking for him only to find him looking for you too. 

A turn and then you two would startle back, shocked at the want mirrored in each other’s gaze. You know you will never find a love like this again. That Haurchefant is and will always be the love of your life, but the fact that you know this, and the fact that your thoughts turn to past tense as if he is gone while he is inside of you makes a sob erupt from your throat as you tighten your arms around him. 

He blurs at the edges, and the fire is no longer crackling in the fireplace though you still see the logs burning. 

Your nostrils burn with the scent of smoke as if the fire has gone out. 

But it’s still burning. 

You close your eyes to banish the image only to open them again in fear of Haurchefant disappearing. 

Why is everything so complicated? 

He pauses in his thrusts at the sight of your tears, concern twisting his expression, but you rock against him, desperate to keep the motion, and before long he is pushing into you one last time, his member twitching as he cums and you cum with him. 

He presses a kiss to your brow. Your nose. Your cheeks. Your lips. “I love you,” he tells you between each kiss. 

You knot your fingers in the sheets, arching to meet his lips. “I love you,” you tell him, eyes drifting shut. 

And when you go to kiss him, to show him just how much you need him, you are met with air. 

There is no warm presence above you. Your nightgown is intact, your hair swept into a braid. His fingers had not painted paths through the locks, and his lips had not left yours swollen. The fire in your room has died down to embers, and if you’re cold because of it, you wouldn’t know because all you can process is that Haurchefant is not here. He is not warm and leaving promises on your fingertips. 

You think of his grave, of his head in your lap as his fingers reached for you, asking for a smile. There’s a hole in his chest that should have been in yours. It is in yours, really, because without Haurchefant you’ve been slowly bleeding out, fading into an abyss. 

Haurchefant is colder than you.

When you finally pull yourself free of the sheets you’ve tangled yourself in, you make your way to the mirror in your little room in Aymeric’s home where you stay because the inn feels odd without Haurchefant waiting downstairs. 

Though you think he may have taken this haven away from you as well. 

There’s an emptiness in your reflection, yawning behind your eyes. For a moment, you think you can see yourself bleeding out. One of those heroes, you’ve always been warned against. 

The ones that bleed and bleed and bleed because they love so much that they will risk themselves for it all. 

Just like Haurchefant. 

Just like you. 

But there’s a nastiness to it all. You stare at your reflection, expression blank. Haurchefant wanted to save people because he was good. 

You want to save people because you want to be consumed. 

You’ve always been like this. Waiting to be swallowed whole by something or someone. From the moment you discovered you were the Warrior of Light, you’ve been waiting and wanting because at that moment your existence stopped being yours. It belonged to Hydaelen. To the scions. There was no saying no. There was only yes and praying that you didn’t die. 

But in Ishgard, you were you again, and Haurchefant is the one who made it that way. 

And when he died, when he died when it should have been you, you think you may have died anyway. 

You grab your dagger from where it sits on your dresser and cut off the braid at the nape of your neck. 

You smile at your reflection the way Haurchefant wanted you to do, but it doesn’t quite meet your eyes, but for a moment you see him behind you. 

You let him consume you. 

Chapter Text

The candlelight barely penetrates the darkness of Aymeric’s abode.

It is too similar to the unrelenting night that haunts your dreams. The undulating shadows that flicker at the edges of your vision during the day, color the reflected light from the stained glass windows impossibly black.

Sometimes there are voices within the force.

It reminds you of your ascent to Meteion, the voices calling out to you—reminders of those lost, those you have failed to save. In those moments, you try not to think of Haurchefant. After all this time, his goodness—his light—is too bright. Even his memory leaves you stunned, tumbling out of dreams, and into a waking world you do not wish to see.

You turn down another hall. His home is easily a maze, and the candlelight in your hands barely reaches the walls. But you’ve spent enough time here to know your way around, even blind. You know to avoid Aymeric’s room so you do not disturb your host even if you always disturb him in the end. Just as you know the endless pacing will not banish the voices.

It is always Haurchefant’s voice first. For those we have lost, for those we can save.

Then the others.

Papalymo. Minfilia. Ysale. Yotsuyu. The list goes on. You recite them over and over again. A prayer against the encroaching optimism of Haurchefant, but it only makes everything loud.

It is so loud, you stop walking.

It is so loud, you fall to your knees, hands over your ears, and fold in on yourself. The silk of your night gown the only softness against your skin. You try and focus on it, but there is only the twisting pain in your chest, like your insides were spiraling.

They all leave. Always. You pave your path in blood. You line it with loss and you cannot fault those who must turn their back away from—for fear of what you bring. Warrior of Darkness. It is the aptest name they have gifted you. In the end, you are alone. They will all leave you just as they did to reach Meteion. They left and you were there all alone. Because you are the only one strong enough. You are the only one who can carry it.

They all leave and you cannot make them stay. Cannot squeeze them into the crevices of your heart. Cannot keep them safe. You will always fail someone and someone will always leave and like all heroes when you reach the end you will—

A hand touches your shoulder. You think it a ghost with the gentleness, but then it settles, warmth against your skin.

Aymeric whispers your name as if it were a confession. Pained and wrought out as if you’d torn it from him.

You look up. The candlelight just barely reveals him in the dark and he glows just like Haurchefant. But where Haurchefant is bright, a sun, Aymeric is the moon. A soothing reflection. His hand moves down your shoulder to your arm, taking hold of you gently as he tries to bring you to your feet. The black of his hair has a blue sheen beneath the flickering light, his eyes just as dark.

He says your name again, and the world stills.

There is only the warmth of his skin against yours, and for the first time in your life, you feel yourself grow roots. They spread beneath you. But not enough. You are not sure if it will ever be enough.

“Aymeric,” you whisper, tears sliding down your cheek. His white shirt fits him loosely, revealing his collarbone. You let him lift you to your feet as your hands come up to his shoulders.

His expression is almost mournful. This is not the first time he’s plucked you from the dark. “Nightmares?”

There is no need to nod. He knows. Your hands slip beneath his shirt almost desperately, fingers brushing over his rosary. The warmth of his skin burns, it spreads through you, and you feel yourself sinking more and more.

Roots spread.

“Help me,” you whisper just as he catches your wrists, whispers your name, but you catch the sound with your mouth.

He makes a surprised sound against you, but it does not take long for him to take you into his arms. His thumb brushes away the tears as he lifts you up. The nightgown scrunches beneath his touch. In his arms, you can feel yourself being forced back into your body—you can feel the roots growing from your bones. And even though you kiss him with a fevered sort of frenzy, everything is slow. Languid. The world spinning just for the two of you.

You wind the rosary around your hand and pull it tighter. Tug him closer. There is a hole inside of you. It makes you feel like you are floating, but when his hands are on you, the feverish warmth brings you to the ground like he were planting a flower.

But you are not a flower. You bite his lip. You do not know why. You are not violent by nature, but you do it anyway. You bite down so hard it makes him take a sharp breath, and then he lifts you up. He carries you down the hall, and his blood is on your lips, and your heart is in pieces in his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, but he swallows your words with a kiss. You’ve been lost for so long, you do not what it is to be found, to be seen as Aymeric does without feeling a whole body grief—a consuming revulsion.

Who would want that? Who would want you?

He uses his back to open the door to his room because of course that is what he would do. Why would he ever use you? Why would he ever risk bruising you?

You grip his rosary so tightly Halone’s crossed spears nearly slice into your palm. It is alright, you think. You can hurt yourself to the chorus of those you’ve lost. Their voices echo even here in his room. Even as he lays you back onto his bed and crawls over you with such careful touches, you can hear them still—softer but present.

His touch slowly drowns them out.

But you are lost with them, aren’t you? You’ve been lost for so long ever since you first started to search for ways to fill the hole inside of you. Who will find you?
Aymeric’s mouth trails to your neck, his hand slides up your thighs. But then his movements catch on your grip on his rosary and he pulls away to see what you have done. Pale eyes search your expression and you freeze with shame.

You are not violent. You try to tell yourself again. You are not violent, and yet here you are trying to spill your own blood. Here you are wearing his upon your lips. There are a thousand others on your hands. It is all so surreal, you feel yourself floating again. Uprooted and drifting away.

But then he moves to cup your wrist. He kisses it. Then the back of your knuckles as his fingers gently prod yours apart and the blades of the spears slip from your palm.

He kisses the space beside the wound as his free hand lifts the rosary from his neck. The sapphires refract moonlight across his chest, specks of blue as he catches both of your wrists. His eyes don’t leave yours as he pins them above your head. They do not leave yours as he slips the rosary around them and pulls it in such a way you find yourself bound. He wedges the spears of the rosary into the wall, just out of your reach, just enough to keep your arms stuck above your head.

“Aymeric,” you whisper softly. The pleading is still there, and his gaze slips from yours to your mouth. Then lower.

Lower.

Lower.

The heat of his gaze nearly equates that of his skin against yours. While he has always been moonlight to you, in this moment he feels like the sun, and you bask in his warmth as you spread your legs apart, an invitation for his light.

For him to help your roots spread.

He doesn’t take long to kiss his way down your neck. Your chest, to your stomach and then your thighs. Each kiss is careful. A whispered prayer against your skin, and it the way his lips meld against you makes stars explode behind your eyes as your back arches in a desperate attempt to meet him.

“This is how I worship,” he once told you. “On my knees before you.”

And now he has fulfilled his prophecy. He had set you at the edge of the bed, and now he kneels at the side, his head between your thighs and his fingers digging into the plush of your skin as his tongue drags against your core.

It is not a devouring, but rather a tasting. Every inch of you on his tongue is savored. The flavor memorized and cherished.

You have never been cherished before.

And then it is overwhelming. His tongue upon you is gentle but thorough. There is not an inch untouched—not a part of you unseen—and it is not long before you are spilling against his mouth and still his tongue is making sure to catch every bit of your essence like it were the Gods’ ambrosia.

He kisses the back of your thighs. The warmth in your center is a wellspring of roots. The voices that haunted the dark have dimmed to silence, and there is only you and him.

He makes you feel calm. Still in a world that is a constant storm. And even though you know that when you walk outside of this room you will be uprooted once more—here, in this dark, in his moonlight, you know peace.

Even if only for a few hours.

Even if only for a few minutes.

You’d take seconds of his attention. And for this moment, and this moment alone, as he crawls over you, it is easy to imagine a future together. The Lord Commander’s spouse. His tip presses against your entrance and you can only gasp as he slides in. You’re already convulsing around him—hardly come down from the high of his mouth—and now there is all of him filling you to the brim.

The hole in your chest feels a little smaller.

You cannot help but wonder if this is what love is as his mouth is on yours and you can taste yourself upon his tongue? You bit him, and he has subdued the violence that rots in your heart and wiped it away as if it were nothing but dust.

“I love you.” The words spill from your lips between soft moans, and his movements pause. Without even looking at him, you know that there is shock there behind those precious pale eyes. You have never said such words, and beneath the rawness of his gaze, you pull at the rosary binding your hand.

Perhaps it is too much. You have always been too much. That’s why they all expect you to carry so much. You have more to give. Therefore, you have more to take. You have more to carry, more weight to bear—

He kisses you sweetly. “I love you too,” his voice is a soft murmur, and the way he smiles against your mouth makes you feel like stardust. He fills you to the brim. His pacing picking up to match your breaths.

He spills into you at the same time you feel yourself break apart. But you aren’t afraid—not with him—not when Aymeric is above you and kissing down your neck as says I love you again and again.

You can feel the pieces putting themselves back together again with each uttered syllable.

Aymeric undoes the rosary binding your wrists and kisses them both in apology. It’s only then that he pulls himself out of you, and it is an aching act.

Some of the hollowness returns, but before you can worry about the voices, he turns you on the bed and tucks you into his side. His arms are warm around you, and his breath tickles the back of your neck as he runs his fingers along your arm in soothing motions that leave you feeling warm.

You had always thought of love as destruction. You had especially thought so when you stood before Meteion, willing to tear yourself apart for the world you loved so much.

For Aymeric to have a chance at another day.

And now he has, and you worried that perhaps the event had changed you. The destruction had never left. Especially not as you felt the call of the void still lingering long after the end. Once you have walked oblivion, what peace is there?

But you find it now. In Aymeric’s arms, and you wonder if love is creation.

If touch is planting, and being held is spreading roots, and his eyes alone are the light you need to grow—then love is surely creation because you feel yourself being born anew.

Over and over again.

When your next nightmare comes, you awake in Aymeric’s arms to his soft and easy breathing, and it does not chase you out into the darkness.

It dissipates in his light.