After I finished writing Blackout Memory, I immediately wrote another Syrenne/Lowell fic... but after typing it out it felt way too cheesy. I might revisit the idea later. For now, I've written something in a different vein with a focus on Syrenne/Lowell/Dagran friendship. It was meant to be a one-shot, but I decided that splitting it into a multi-chap fic would make it more accessible. The chapters will alternate between present (post-game) and past scenes. Needless to say, there are significant spoilers of the end-game variety in the "present" chapters! The fic could also work if someone read the "past" chapters as stand-alone vignettes. I have everything written up already, just a matter of editing and leaving a few days' time between posting new chapters.


Remembrance

Companionship [present]

After Syrenne set out the final coaster on the final table, she stood back and looked the room over proudly. It was a modest place, dingy and empty, just one floor with no room for boarders like at Ariela's. She was actually the one doing the renting; it had been a blacksmith's when they first came to Lazulis City, but with the peaceful times that had been achieved there was less demand for weapon and armour specialists. The pub market, however, had a vacancy resulting from word getting out about the occult activities at the Flame and Lizard. That word may or may not have been strategically released by a certain ex-mercenary who was trying to cement a stable life for herself—oh well, they deserved it for housing such monsters anyway.

So when the blacksmith retired and made the ground floor of his building available to rent, Syrenne swooped in. She had been living at Ariela's tavern just as when they had been getting by as mercenaries, only now she was earning the cash to afford it by partaking regularly in arena events. They had added solo tournaments, which meant that Syrenne's participation was not limited to times when she could rally a team of fighters together. It allowed her to keep up payments to the landlord, save up for her ambition to open a pub of her own, and even indulge in some fun nights of drinking to excess (you know, for research and mental preparation). Even though she hadn't put aside quite enough gold to afford the rent the blacksmith was asking for, she persuaded him to let her and her, ah, cohabitant, live there on the cheap while she set things up to open business. Once the establishment was open, they could afford more—that was her hope, in any case. Looking at the empty, lifeless space in front of her, it was a struggle to imagine it full of action and sound. The most people she had seen in the building were her close friends, and though she cared for them, they hardly represented the social atmosphere she was aiming for. Still, even in its barrenness she could feel the potential for something grand. Maybe it was self-centred pride on her part, but it was hers and she had worked hard and it was going to be a milestone in her life. She was allowed to smile having achieved something that would have been so unimaginable not too long ago;

However, whenever she let herself think for a moment, "I'm happy," that feeling was always followed closely by guilt. How can she let herself be happy when there are people who were lost along the way to that happiness? Worse yet, people whose deaths enabled that happiness to begin with... Sometimes when she was alone, Syrenne found herself wondering how things would have been different if they hadn't killed (try as she might to come up with a less harsh word for it, it always came down to killing) Dagran. It wasn't a reasonable thought, of course. They themselves would be dead, that's how different things would be. It was still something that crept into her mind from time to time, less now than it used to, but sometimes.

No one ever really talked about the fact that they had suffered losses alongside the happiness they had gained, but surely the rest of them also questioned if it was really a fair trade-off. Zael probably had it worst, losing both of his mentors in such a vengeful mess, able to openly grieve for one and not the other. And despite Calista never being fond of Count Arganan's intrusion in her life, he was still her uncle and guardian of many years – didn't it hurt to lose him? The rest of the mercenaries mourned Dagran above all, yet none of them admitted it to one another. There was something shameful about missing someone who had done such terrible things, even if that wasn't really the person they missed.

Syrenne missed the Dagran who had always joined her at the bar whether he was itching for a drink or not. He'd sit there and keep an eye on her, offer an ear if she needed to rant, or serve as the voice of reason for those nights she overdid it on the alcohol. When Lowell began travelling with them, they had become a trio, spending the evenings together having a drink or seven. They'd regularly make fools of themselves while Dagran laughed to himself at the sidelines. And when morning came, he could always be relied on to recount the stories of what they had done when they couldn't remember them themselves. Yeah, he would have fit in well at the pub Syrenne was going to open the next day...The idea that it could possibly become the home of regulars like them, reminders of the past, left her anxious. Would seeing friendships like that warm her heart, or make it ache?

The front door rattled as someone opened it. There was only one person it could be, as the bar would be open to the public for the first time the following day. She angled her head towards the door regardless and felt a smile creep across her lips when she saw Lowell walk in. It had become a regular subconscious action whenever she saw him, and every time she would turn away or cover her mouth so that he didn't get cocky about his effect on her. On that evening she brought a hand to her chin, one finger over her lips, and looked around the room as though deep in thought. True, she had been deep in thought, but more the kind that involves a distant stare and not a focused one.

"Hey you," she said flippantly.

Lowell approached her from the side and wrapped her in a tight hug. She folded her arms over his and leaned into him, no longer bothering to conceal her smile. This was the happiness she wondered about most of all. It was the happiness that Dagran's Outsider, the cause of conflict and sorrow, had granted her. Was she allowed to be thankful? Lowell relaxed his hold and dipped down to kiss Syrenne on the forehead. "Gotten everything ready?" he asked.

"Yeah." Syrenne turned to look up at him and her gaze stopped before reaching his eyes. A bandage around his neck. Although no particular scenario emerged in her mind, she made the immediate association: bandages cover wounds, wounds are bad, bandages are bad. She didn't want to deal with wounds anymore—not on him, never again. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened."

She reworded the question, her voice stern in response to his evasiveness. "What did you do?"

Lowell just smiled. "You want to take that bandage off? They said it was supposed to breathe."

"Breathe...?" Syrenne echoed. The apprehension had receded; as long as Lowell was offering the truth and not hiding it, there was no need to worry. Where apprehension was lost, curiosity took residence. "Did you get a face implanted in the back of your neck or something?" she asked jokingly. "I might have a problem with that."

"Shallow, shallow..." Lowell teased.

Swatting his chest, Syrenne retorted, "Like you have the right to say that!"

He laughed. "Just take it off already! It isn't a face. I wasn't kidnapped by a madman and used for experiments. Nobody nicked me with an arrow or burned me with a torch. It was intentional." Despite the light-heartedness with which he said it, there was some reservation in those last three words. Syrenne stepped around behind Lowell and tugged at the bandage until she found the starting point to unwind it.

It just took peeling the corner of the bandage enough to show skin for Syrenne to recognize what it was. The edge of a wing etched in a tribal motif was the first thing made visible, then an eye-like marking and a second wing. The skin surrounding the black ink was red and slightly raised, and a little smear of blood hadn't been cleaned off before the bandage was put on. The size, the design, the placement... they were all exact. It was rather haunting.

"Dagran's tattoo..."

So he had been thinking of him, too.