Prompt from soaringsparrows: "Ooh, October prompts! How about Thancred, the Warrior of Light, and the moment he realised "oh no, the joking flirtations have become REAL flirtations, I have FEELINGS now"? (With a female Warrior, but a male one would work just as well!)"
It began as a game. A habit, really - there was nothing so gauche as losing or winning involved, and Thancred was hardly crude enough to keep score. His compliments were always intended to be playful contrivances alone, with neither malice nor manipulation in the bargain. The less they meant, the more freely he was able to dole them out. Flirting kept his wits sharp for whenever he needed to bluff his way out of being detained by a city guard, or warm up a contact to make the flow of information that much easier. It was harmless work. Nothing to regret.
It began as a game. That was what he reminded himself of, later.
It hadn't stayed that way for long.
His first chance to chat with the Warrior had been after the initial introductions had been made at the Waking Sands, as Minfilia had welcomed their newest rose officially into the fold. Papalymo and Yda had both looked uncommonly smug for having ushered them along the way; it wasn't as if there was a standing competition for the highest quota of recruits brought in each moon, but Thancred liked to think it was a little unfair for them to have the advantage as a two-person team.
Another adventurer, Thancred had thought at the time - albeit a talented one. A conjurer from Gridania, or so he'd gathered from the conversation flitting around and the brass-bound staff in her hand. It didn't surprise Thancred much, really. The woman could have passed for the Elder Seedseer's cousin: auburn hair, eyes that pinched into teardrops at the corners, that slightly hunched tension of any native-born Gridanian who'd just been taken from their forest and tossed into an actual city for once. With people.
He'd waited until the briefing had been wrapped up and the assignment to assist the Immortal Flames at Camp Drybone had been passed out, and then he'd approached her.
"A pleasure to have you with us, I must say," he'd offered grandly as the rest of the Scions were trickling out. "We can always do with more pretty faces around here."
He hadn't really thought about anything he'd been saying; it was all just warm words and a warmer smile. Flattery from a stranger always invited a number of telling reactions - it was as good as a few rounds of ale at the nearest tavern, and cheaper too. Hostility, wariness, a blush or a frown: it all revealed something about the other person's past experiences, and even though Thancred wasn't wheedling someone's purse out of their jerkin anymore, it still had its uses. He was long-accustomed to a wide range of replies, from enthusiasm to cold scoffs. He'd weathered them all; nothing could surprise him anymore.
But the Warrior's response had been none of these.
"Truly?" she'd asked him instead, looking at him with the same weary curiosity of someone who'd heard it all before, and was willing to point out just how foolish your words were once turned into statements instead of mere pleasantries. "And what would you use them for?"
Thancred had blinked at her a few times, and then - as she had remained silent, merely waiting - he had realized that her question had been serious.
"A figure of speech," he'd excused himself hastily, just in case she'd taken offense. "Or not, as it were - by no means is my present company equipped with mere metaphor! Nor do I mean to imply that my lady is only here by virtue of her physical graces. 'Tis merely that your presence is not unlike a fine morning breeze across the beaches of Costa del Sol. All our spirits are lifted to have the refreshment of your company with us, easing our pains with the grace of the Navigator Herself."
He'd rambled in self-defense; it was usually a good tactic. Either the listener would get lost in the words, or they'd get impatient and cut through it, and then both parties could be excused from what had become an entirely uncomfortable situation otherwise.
But the Warrior had listened to it all without losing one onze of attention, her gaze patiently fixed upon him until he had finally petered out helplessly, concluding with a limpid smile and shrug. Even then, she continued to wait expectantly, until she finally seemed to come to the decision that that was the extent of his explanation - and then she made a polite nod, and ducked away, as if she'd never asked at all.
He had watched her go, the hem of her worn robes flicking about her sandals, and realized that he couldn't read her at all.
The knife-workers of Limsa Lominsa had a word for people like her, who had perfected the art of walking through the worst of places without batting an eye. Bitsoff, they'd say, that there dove's a real bitsoff, best stubble it 'fore she blows. Quiet folk, the kind you wanted to avoid. You could hand over the Sultana's own jewels in front of their faces and they'd still deny seeing the passoff from two yalms away. People like her wouldn't stir up trouble as long as you ignored them back. They'd let their eyes slide right over you like the two of you were bricks in opposite walls. Easy to overlook as just another professional out about their work, both of you with places to be and various things to take.
But none of them were marks. All of them, without a doubt - every single one - had some kind of disaster just waiting in their pocket or tucked up their sleeve, waiting for an excuse to explode. A ballista that was real, or magickal, or just plain messy. They wouldn't care if you pointed a blade at them. They'd take it in the gut without blinking, just for the chance to tear out your throat with their teeth.
Cross one, and they'd be picking bits of you out of the tide for days.
The knife-workers had words for people like Thancred as well. Even after leaving them to join up with Louisoix, he'd never lost the knack of floating through the middle levels of the city's underbelly: easy-natured, willing to let folks go about their business, lend a hand whenever a little charm was needed. He was casual. Convenient. Cooperative and naturally distrustful of authority even when he was working on the same side as a city-state. The fingersmiths all loved Thancred; he always served as the right kind of distraction whenever they worked through a crowd, slipping coinpurses and trinkets out of pockets while their owners blushed prettily underneath Thancred's flattery. Sometimes, they even gave him a cut.
He wasn't always able to win the right kind of reaction - but he always managed to evoke something out of people, whether it was hostility or mere indifference. Their newest recruit had been something else entirely.
If he'd met her on the streets of Limsa Lominsa when he was still working them, Thancred would have slipped on by and let her be. That would have been the end of that. She wasn't a mark. Not profitable enough to risk gutting himself. Best to move along.
And that would have been the end of that.
But as a fellow Scion, he couldn't. He wasn't an alley-fiddler anymore, delighting in any sign of weakness in those around him. Louisoux was gone from their ranks, and now that same tiredness was in Minfilia too these days, every time he saw her, and if Thancred let himself blink then he'd only end up failing her a second time. A third time. Forever.
He'd fail all of them.
Louisoux had taken him in as a child. Thancred had been given a place even with all his shortcomings, and it was only right that he do something to pay the generosity back, to watch over the remaining members of the Circle of Knowing and the fresh ones in the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.
Even their newest member now, who had looked at Thancred with a mixture of expectation and resignation, as if she had already known what he was going to say, but was allowing him the opportunity to disappoint her anyway.
He was still trying to figure out what to say to her when she was taken by Ifrit.
The matter with the Flames and Ifrit had been a mistake the moment he'd heard of the abduction in the Invisible City. They'd already known Ungust to be a deceiver - it should have been no surprise to anyone that a betrayal had been waiting, least of all Thancred. It was his fault that he'd let her get captured, his fault that the Warrior had gone to Ifrit and would have died there, if not for her Echo. Luck and the grace of the Mothercrystal alone had spared her.
He had made it to the Bowl of Embers with the Immortal Flames in tow, true - but after Ifrit had been both summoned and slain. Too late, to save her from what should have been either sacrifice or tempering, and then he would have had to put their fledgling member to death himself, or carry out her cold corpse on her shoulders.
Too late to do anything as she had wearily straightened up from the bloodstained sands, leaning on her conjurer's staff for support, and had ignored his offer of assistance in hobbling out.
He'd babbled at her in Drybone, and then a second time once she returned to the Waking Sands, coming in on the tail end of his report to Minfilia. It had taken all his skills at dissembling to slap an air of nonchalance back over himself as she had waited attentively through Miniflia's debriefing. After the discussion had wrapped up, and Minfilia had turned away to reflect upon her own thoughts privately with Tupsimati, it should have been time for him to make a hasty escape.
But his boots stopped beside the Warrior and refused to move further, even as he chided himself for his reluctance to simply leave. Outside the door, there was only greater sorrow waiting; Thancred could not escape it. His spirit felt as if it had been scraped down to its very last drops. There were soldiers to bury and the remaining tempered to execute, and dallying would not lessen the amount by even a single corpse.
He did not want to reach out to her if she did not welcome it - but he wanted, badly, just a brief moment of relief from his own shortcomings. To see someone else's smile, and know that he had been the cause of it, bringing some onze of joy back into the world. He was as thirsty for it as a drunkard for their first ale of the day, and he turned into his need even as he turned towards her.
"'Tis a good thing the life was not dimmed from your eyes," he heard himself say, the desperation of it like a sour mist in the back of his mouth. "Few colors have such memorable lustre, and 'twould be a pity to be made bereft of them."
He could taste his own failure even as he strung together the words, rattling off the line without putting any true thought into it. He had no attention to spare for true flattery. All his attention was on the Warrior: her robes still singed, her staff sporting a fresh crack all along its length, barely held together by the carapace of its bronze bands. She'd fought amalj'aa too; there was a nasty scrape along her left arm that she either hadn't bothered to attend to, or hadn't had the energy. It was still in the process of scabbing over. It would leave a scar, if no one tended to it.
He didn't know why that bothered him so much, but it did. It would leave a scar, and he hadn't been fast enough, and he couldn't stop looking at the mark as if it was moments away from opening up and bleeding fresh again, all over her robes, all over the floor.
But she was regarding him directly now, and her silence eventually dragged his gaze back up to her face, as luminously indifferent as the moon. "And what color are my eyes, Thancred?"
He looked instantly, of course - but the Warrior had already lowered her head and withdrawn a step, just enough to shadow them underneath the lamps, and he realized he honestly didn't know.
There was no good way to lie around it either. His thoughts scrambled like sneak-thieves out a window, fleeing before they could be caught. The only impressions his memory gave him were those of pale colors, blue or green or gray; her eyes were light, like an elixir that had been watered down past any potency, or a liquor that burned you from the belly out.
She was still watching him. Thancred cleared his throat. "They are akin to the winter sky at noon," he bluffed. "A shade which causes all who see it to lift their heads in admiration for the warmth it brings, even in the coldest months."
Predictably, she remained silent after he was through. As one blessed by the Echo - he imagined - it might even be within her powers to penetrate his speech as effortlessly as any other creature's tongue, reading the truth of him beneath every pretty word.
The skin of his face tingled; he could feel himself flushing in embarrassment. "Pray excuse me, my lady," he said with a hasty bow. A few strides propelled him to the door leading out of the Solar. His hand was already upon the latch before he spoke again, knowing full well how cowardly his retreat was. "I needs must speak to the Flame General, and convey my apologies for the lost."
She was everyone's favorite after that; the Grand Companies nigh-swarmed her in their adoration and greed, hoping to recruit her to their loyalties next. For all that she was a Scion, she was an adventurer first, and Minfilia was canny to keep their members embedded in Eorzea's affairs. Their influence was only as good as they could spread it, and they hardly had the resources to remain secluded - not when it was difficult enough keeping their members fed and equipped properly, even asking for donations from their pockets in kind.
Each of the Grand Companies sent a representative. Thancred watched the Warrior throughout that selection process as well, wondering if he would discover that her reluctance was simply a dislike of the Scions themselves, and all she needed was an organization that she actually enjoyed being part of. While recruitment was hardly forced, the Scions didn't have much in the way of actual benefits for membership, apart from secretly saving Eorzea. Financial compensation was sparse. Funding always came with strings attached, and Thancred knew well enough how expensive it was to travel on the road.
But the Warrior merely reacted to each of the three offers with the same polite formality, before - with a lowering of her eyes - she turned to the Twin Adders, as if there had never been a choice to begin with. Only the pretense of courting to be observed, before the inevitable affirmation of her loyalty to Gridania.
Thancred watched how the Flames and Maelstrom officers remained undeterred in shouting her praises; he listened to the conversation newly swarming around the Waking Sands, all the Scions and their allies eager to see what the Warrior might conquer next.
But he also watched the way she held her arms tightly against her body, unwilling to brush against anyone else. The softness of her voice, going so often unheard in the crowd unless someone directly addressed her, allowing the rest of the conversation to die down enough for her to speak. Her eyes, impassive as she watched other people ramble enthusiastically about the next forays to come - a pale grey after all, light enough that they wavered on the cusp of other colors, unwilling to throw their allegiance behind any single label.
The mud on her boots from walking through swamp and cave alike. The white lace around her throat, like a bandage waiting to be soaked in blood.
It wasn't often that Thancred ended up so short on words. He'd been trained early on in patter by Limsa Lominsa's fingersmiths, once they realized he was starting to come into a pretty face and an even prettier tongue. Flattery was only another tool for his livelihood - but he'd quickly learned to like it for its own merits anyway, even when he wasn't looking to lighten someone's purse. Flattery made people smile. It made them relax, helped them let go of the wariness they were holding onto like it was the only armor they had against a world that would shank them the moment they let themselves blink.
The thieves of Thancred's childhood dens had taught him all the pointers for cozying up to a stranger, just as they'd shown him the right way to carry a hook blade between his knuckles without slicing his own tendons. It had been a matter of practicality back then. When a quick bit of praise meant the difference between eating that night or not, Thancred had learned to appreciate the art.
But afterwards - after Louisoix had taken him out of all that - Thancred had kept doing it. A single fond word was like an arcanist's incantation, changing the world around him into a different form of reality. Bringing a smile to someone's face with only a few phrases felt like something miraculous, a healer's trick for the soul itself. Flattery was easy to dispense, and just as easy to brush off with no hard feelings in the bargain. It wasn't even about having a tumble - usually never was, if Thancred had to be honest with himself.
If he couldn't do anything else for them - if he couldn't heal someone's illness or save them from poverty or bring back the dead - at least he could gift them with a smile for their day.
Even at his most powerless, he could at least do that much.
Despite Tataru's frequent concerns, Thancred was careful to stop at the slightest hint that his advances were unwanted. He'd been judged on his demeanor before, called a rake and a lecher in every corner of Eorzea. Everyone's signals for interest and disinterest were different. Thancred was always a little on his guard despite his florid compliments; one man might prefer simply deflecting any praise, while another woman might have no hesitations in telling Thancred outright that he was unwanted.
But he kept at it anyway, even when there were so many things that could go wrong, because there was so much else that could go right too. It was far harder to be serious all the time, and to watch people struggling through the cold of the world on their own. To not have the encouragement of someone else reminding them that they were all so strong and valiant, all astounding, breathtaking in their courage.
Far harder to say, I am sorry I could not do more to save your father, and hope that might serve as comfort instead.
But not even the praise of the Grand Companies seemed to scratch the wall that the Warrior had put around herself, as if she had been hearing the wrong words all her life, and had given up years ago on anything else. Everyone saw the staff. Everyone. It was what defined her to them. Such a determined healer, a credit to Gridania's conjurers. Brave enough to go into battle against a Primal all on her own, standing alone against beasts which could snap her in half or tear out her innards without any armor to protect her. A perfect Warrior, a stalwart fighter, willing and pure of heart.
She was all of that, true enough. But the more that Thancred watched her, the more he realized that the Warrior didn't look stoic. She looked resigned, as if she was simply standing there like a tailor's doll while everyone else spoke eloquent words around her, a mere placeholder for her own life. Distant, detached from her own existence - as if she were waiting for the rest of a jest to be unleashed at her expense, that the whole affair was some sort of mockery that she was going along with so that it might be over faster.
Flattery was supposed to make someone feel good. And the possibility that the Warrior might feel miserable all the time was one that Thancred couldn't ignore; there was nothing fair about it, nothing at all.
If Thancred had still been a dock-brat, he'd have skirted around her and walked on, looking for easier coin. But he wasn't that child anymore. Louisoix had given him the chance to be something else, and yet here - as a Scion - he had no idea how he could actually help.
He caught her as she was preparing to leave for the memorial services, wondering if maybe the praise of the Grand Companies might have helped to reassure her that the Scions were indeed a legitimate, recognized organization. For all he knew, she might have simply been fearful that these strangers who had popped out of nowhere were actually some sort of cult, like the Lambs of Dalamud - who were, reportedly, all very nice people until they finally smuggled you down to their altars. Her standoffishness might merely have been some sort of protection against being thrust into the company of strangers and told to go fight Primals for the sake of Eorzea: a war which never really ended, and neither did the guilt.
She was nearly lost among the other Scions in the flurry of the Waking Sands: just another adventurer in a homespun robe, her auburn hair tucked back neatly in herringbone braids that left the back of her neck bare. Her staff leaned into the crook of her shoulder as she sorted through the available supplies, trading conversation between the armor mender and Haneko Burneko to request her repairs. The common room buzzed with noise around her, other scouts and recruits preparing for their own assignments.
Weaving through the crowd, Thancred snatched up one of the carved bone rings that she had set down on the table, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger while he peered at her through it. Her disapproving expression bobbed in and out of the circle that it bounded. "We shall have to get you better equipped as well. How shameful would it be for us to send out the jewel of our own forces in such poor condition?"
It was a good thing that he did not expect playfulness from her by now; if she had made an honest grab for her ring, he might not have been able to yank it away in time. As it was, the Warrior simply turned her full indifference upon him, which was a partial victory. "'Tis not such a bad thing. When one has a manageable disadvantage, it can train you to better overcome it."
"Is that how you consider it?" Thancred rolled the bone circle in his fingers, back and forth along the pad of his thumb. "Manageable? And what of me then?" Deftly, he pinched the ring into a fold of his hand to hide it, displaying an empty palm before he made it reappear once more with a grin. "Am I also a disadvantage for you to hone your strength upon, o fairest star on the horizon?"
At first, he thought he had her. The Warrior opened her mouth, eyes narrowing as she fell victim to watching the display of sleight-of-hand: a distraction to focus her attention along with her ire, and allow her speech free reign. But she managed to restrain herself in time, arching an eyebrow at him. "No. You are merely another person on the road, Thancred. No more, and no less."
He let that one go; the Warrior held out her hand imperiously towards him until he gave in, and placed the ring carefully upon it. "For all that you labor under such restrictions, your skills at healing are already remarkable." People liked it when their good qualities were affirmed; if someone was shy about their physical appearance, there was usually no shortage of other virtues to praise. "A new bracelet would surely aid your magicks substantially. Mayhap a piece in finely wrought brass?"
Unruffled, she set the ring back on the counter with a click, lining it up alongside the rest of the repair order. "There are many conjurers in Gridania, Thancred. I am not the strongest by any measure."
No luck there. Stymied again, Thancred waited until the armor mender had gathered up the Warrior's equipment and had turned away to partition it aside in its own crate. Then he ducked his head towards her - making certain not to veer too close to her personal space - and let his voice drop similarly into a murmur.
"Do you want me to stop?" This was the part he hated most, having to ask outright. Far better to let a rejection be negotiated in the safe, uncertain territory of flirtations, where no one had to be forced into openly saying no. Both parties could save face that way, laughing away the brief accident of their interactions, and retreating back to their own corners of their lives to pretend that nothing had ever happened in the first place.
But Thancred couldn't tell. He couldn't read her well enough, not even as a fellow Scion - as a comrade, the friend that he wanted to be, and not simply another Grand Company officer clapping guilelessly along while she stood quiet and alone in a room, applause falling like snow in a circle around her and leaving her untouched.
"I'll do it," he tacked on hurriedly, watching her frown. "If it would put you at greater ease, then I swear - I'll not offer another word of poetry nor admiration again. I don't wish to make you feel as if you have to... have to stomach me like a marlboro's belch. I'll not have the Antecedent exile you for refusing to laugh at my humor."
Her voice was strangely kind when she replied, as quiet as his own, as if they were trading a watchguard schedule under the pretense of picking out fruit at the market. "How can you offer to stop complimenting me, Thancred, when you haven't even managed to start yet?"
The neutrality of it was unexpected; Thancred blinked. Encouraged by her tolerance - he had guessed her opinion of his attempts already - he glanced sidelong to her hopefully. "Does that mean you find me charming enough to continue?"
But he had dallied too long, and his window of opportunity had already closed. The armor mender had finished the repair estimation and was already coming back to them, counting off the gil cost on their fingers. The Warrior gave him a mirthless glance. "That depends. Did I ask Thancred Waters, the braggart? Or the person standing in front of me today?"
"You wound me, my lady!" Forcing a chuckle that felt like nothing but teeth, Thancred placed a hand over his chest as if to stem the injury. "They are one and the same."
"Are they?" she asked, in that same calm, unflappable rebuttal that she had given them the first time they had spoken together - and then paid her fee, gathered the remainder of her supplies in her traveling pack, and left.
He found himself toying with a dagger as he mulled over the issue that evening, working his fingers around the edges of the blade with reckless overfamiliarity. If he was careless, he'd nick himself. Really careless and he'd actually cut something, and even the smallest injury to a hand would bleed like mad.
He fiddled with the weapon anyway, challenging it to hurt him with each rotation of its blade through his knuckles.
He'd come across people he couldn't cheer up before. Twelve knew there were enough of them in the world, and - to be fair - they often had perfectly good reasons not to welcome in a grinning stranger who looked like he wanted nothing more than to run off with their virtue along with their undergarments. Thancred wasn't vain enough to think it was his own business to single-handedly bring good cheer to all of Eorzea. Not even the Saint of Nymeia could accomplish that.
But the aloofness which had wrapped itself around the Warrior had only grown with every task she had shouldered for the Scions, deepening with each bit of praise the Grand Companies threw in her direction, like a moat that both sides were happily digging together. There were no bridges. And even though the Warrior seemed to be on good enough terms with her new peers, she never opened up to anyone either, not about anything important - but no one seemed to notice.
There were words for those kinds of deflections as well. They were all ones that Thancred knew because he'd learned them himself: always keep the other person talking, steer their attention to focus on themselves, and they'd never notice the things you weren't saying.
Always keep your distance. Never let anyone come close.
The Warrior was as good as an alleyway dodger at that. No - she was better. You could only feel her true self distantly in the gloom, an indistinct shadow sliding around the very edges of your sight. Glimpsing her in a crowd was like catching a coeurl's eyes throwing back the gleam of your lamplight, making no sign of if it was preparing to pounce or not.
Like the ocean, constantly retreating away, an endless tide - or a person staked out on an island who had given up all hope of seeing rescue on the horizon, for all the ships that had passed them had also passed them by.
If Thancred wanted to have the slimmest chance of changing that, he would have to convince her to listen to him first. And before he could accomplish that much, he had to pay attention to what mattered to her - namely, he would have to learn.
It became a challenge after that to try and find out what might bring the Warrior any kind of reaction other than polite dismissal. She was gone almost constantly on Scion business - visiting the sylphs of the Greatwood, and then shuffling back and forth from Little Ala Mhigo to the Shroud again - while Thancred was spending all his energy racing about Eorzea, trying to keep her from having to travel so much in the first place. As independent agents orphaned by the loss of Louisoix, the Scions had to fight for each one of their connections. Information never came cheap. If Thancred could only verify the rumors first, gather the crucial facts they needed, then they would be able to keep their efforts focused where they needed to be, instead of sending their own people out like a scattering of arrows fired blindly into the bushes.
It wasn't just the Warrior who was being wrung dry either. Minfilia was engulfed by the rigors of running an organization that had suddenly lost its most prominent member, trying to find sufficient funding and maintain good enough relations to keep the Scions trusted by the city-states, rather than get tossed in the nearest gaol. It left her unable to leave the Waking Sands for any length of time without having to dash back and receive another report, or decipher another ledger. She was well enough close to a prisoner there, shackled by her responsibilities and forced to recall her own agents every time she needed to give them a debriefing that couldn't be risked over linkpearl. Thancred ran as hard as he could to try and give her a breather, or at least a day to herself when she could walk about under Thanalan's sky and remember what the sun looked like.
But Minfilia was trapped. Thancred couldn't be everywhere, even though he tried. And the end result was that people like the Warrior were being sent out again and again without enough preparation, coming up unexpectedly against Ascians and their agents, and coming back with fresh wounds.
When they came back at all.
Each time he racked himself into another carriage or pushed himself through an aetheryte, all Thancred could think about was how it would only be a matter of time before he would be too late again for the final, fatal battle that would claim the Warrior at last.
You didn't often see healers on the frontline, and for good reason: they were the first targets of any enemy with a lick of sense. Asking your medics to wade directly into a melee when they were dressed in cloth instead of steel was suicide on all counts. If they were incapacitated, you couldn't exactly patch them up yourself. It made sense to send additional support alongside a healer. A blade, a shield, a body that was more expendable than they were. You never sacrificed them first.
But, no matter how unreasonable the demand, the Warrior went along with it anyway. She made no protest as she was sent all over Eorzea in search of Ascian rumors, despite never having heard of such enemies before. She did everything without protest - but also without reward, as if she had become accustomed to standing quietly alone with no one beside her, and was simply waiting for the world itself to finally break her.
It made Thancred that much more worried whenever they did cross paths. Your patience rivals that of Nophica Herself, he tried once, fruitlessly, only to have her sigh and vanish with the excuse of needing to find dinner. You walk with a dancer's grace, as if you should be clad in silks and bells, was even worse. Praising her directly got him nowhere. None of her achievements seemed to be a point of pride for her, as if she had already detached herself from any measure of value of that long ago. Whenever Thancred commented on her skills as a healer, she merely turned a perturbed look upon him, as if concerned that he had somehow struck his head and needed to lie down for a while.
Yet - despite coming no closer to her - simply being around the Warrior was more than worth it. Each of their encounters gave him something else about her to treasure, like a magpie gleefully hoarding any gleaming stone it could find, no matter how mundane. He couldn't be anything less than sincere with her, and it delighted him in a strange fashion, like being run through a set of tumbling exercises that he hadn't practiced for years, scuffing his elbows and cracking his head on the mats, feeling the pleasant soreness afterwards of managing to survive through it all. It kept him on his toes in a way that he hadn't been since Louisoix's death, forcing him to pay closer attention to his own words, deliberately committing himself to each one that he spoke.
She demanded nothing less.
He didn't understand why he liked it so much. Having to always think before he spoke was exhausting at times; she inevitably caught him whenever he was already tired from the road and just tossing conversation around without really caring about the consequences. After one particularly ridiculous evening when he had tried to wittily ask if she'd be interested in joining him for a few glasses of cherry brandewine - and she had pointed out that it sounded as if he was interested in fornicating with an aldgoat - Thancred had sat himself down on his bunk alone, and had helplessly tried to stop grinning like an idiot for the rest of the night.
She was paying attention to him. She was paying attention to everything about him, when no one else seemed to notice whenever Thancred was distracted or light-headed from missing another meal on the road, or seeking to hide the fact he'd been fighting off a case of ochu poisoning from an infiltration gone awry. Every careless line, every superficial scrap of wit. She hauled him to account for all of it.
She refused to let him hide behind any kind of facade, and it was an agony that he couldn't get enough of, not even if he drowned himself in her scorn and laughed himself to death on its bittersweetness.
He wasn't the only one to be challenged by her skepticism, either. The Warrior had a shrewdness sharp enough to rival the merchants straight off the Sapphire Avenue Exchange, and a light, roundabout humor that had the deftness of a flensing knife, slipping in and out of exchanges before a person could even realize they'd been stung. She didn't need for anyone to acknowledge her moments of wit. They floated like driftweed between the conversations people thought they were having with her, and the ones she actually had, with barely any overlap.
But Thancred loved seeing them, whenever he did uncover one. And even if she had no interest in him - even if she did not care for him as more than another associate in their forces - he still needed to do something for her. There had to be a way that he could help, or at least show that he was grateful for how she was risking her life for people who seemed about as close as strangers to her, but for whom she was willing to die for anyway.
All he knew was that everything he said had no effect. Again and again in their verbal sparring, it seemed as if the Warrior was simply watching a card game lay itself out where every single hand was marked, and where every one of Thancred's bluffs had been seen so many times before that his failure held no stigma: it was merely expected.
In lieu of hope, the Warrior had taught herself to go through life unseen - and, as soon as he realized that, Thancred suddenly seized on one of the things that had been bothering him ever since he first saw her standing in the Waking Sands, her hands clutching her staff like a shield.
In all the time he had known her, he didn't think he'd seen an honest smile from her yet.
Rumors skipped from Ul'dah to the East Shroud, and then skittered like a nest of dislodged spiders into every corner of Eorzea. The Ascians - apparently thwarted in their attempts to turn the remaining sylphs against Gridania - had dug further into the Twelveswood. They were inciting the sahagin. They were responsible for all of Wineport's chocobos taking ill from poor feed, along with the increase of wood mites in the South Shroud, and a spat of bad dreams that one merchant kept insisting were prophetic.
There was too much to keep track of. Too much to sort through, and then dismiss.
Thancred could barely manage the trips. Aetheryte transportation was exhausting, even for him; he was starting to have to resort to chocobos just to keep himself from passing out on a regular basis, his aether feeling more and more drained after every skip across Eorzea. Crystal thefts were popping up everywhere. Kidnappings, too. Though the Twelveswood was nominally the domain of Yda and Papalymo to monitor, Thancred moved more quietly than either one of the pair, and when he heard that the Warrior had been set about the task of investigating Haukke Manor, he had promptly changed his route.
He managed to track her down at last in the Roost, just as the tide of the evening's customers was beginning to flow in for dinner. She was at one of the tables in the very furthest corner of the Carline Canopy, huddled over her plate and a cup of tea, and when he swept down grandly towards her - careful to give her plenty of warning at his approach, lest she startle like a hippogryph and strike off his head - she turned a wary stare upon him.
"I thought you'd already be off by now, back to another round of touring Eorzea." His voice was laughing, even as he cursed his poor jest; it was his fault that she had to even run so fruitlessly about in the first place, after all. "The Ironhearts should make you an honorary member of their clan."
She looked entirely unenthusiastic at his greeting, but not openly hostile, and so he took that as enough invitation to carefully pull out a chair, and seat himself. There were only a few bites left to her meal; he congratulated himself on catching her in time, even if it meant she had an excuse to similarly depart.
"Though the woman herself is slain, the business with Lady Amandine has yet to be fully settled." The Warrior nodded at the nearest waiter, who carried over a fresh teacup and poured neatly for Thancred from the pot upon the table before sweeping away. "Haukke Manor was sold to House Dartancours for a reason. Many of the older families in Gridania do not wish to see it simply returned to the Seedseers, lest the entire purpose of the exchange be defeated. Some refuse to even believe the reports of the voidsent, claiming that such overblown fears serve as an excuse to return the estate. Their gossip must run its course, and then I can escape."
The casualness of the comment - off-handed, nonchalant in how easily it dredged up Gridania politics in a way that an outsider would have only guessed at - snagged Thancred's attention. He'd never looked into her personal history, assuming, like most of the other recruits, that she would eventually share whatever she was comfortable with. Then he'd become so caught up with the business with Ifrit that he'd entirely forgotten everything else. "Spoken like a native, indeed! Were you born in Gridania, or did you come here to attend Stillglade Fane?"
She neatly sawed off a piece of venison with the same precision as a chirurgeon undertaking an amputation. "I have lived here all my life."
"Then you also have relatives within these boughs." It was the most basic assumption. Gridania did not easily take in strangers, even talented ones; being brought into the Conjurer's Guild would have been easier for natives. But she was eating in the Carline, and she was eating alone, which had its own significance when another option was available. "Relatives you wish to avoid."
Her knife paused over a chunk of carrot, and she glanced up at him with a sharp consideration, a calculating thoughtfulness that made Thancred instantly aware that he was sitting with his back exposed to the nearest door. "Not as such," she replied, and then clarified. "We are not as distinguished as the other great families, and so my kin have enough daily worries to attend to. I am more than capable of feeding myself."
He held his breath, not wanting to push her too far; if she wanted to explain further, then it meant that her family's reputation meant enough to her that she wanted to defend it. But it was the first thing that she had said of herself to him - the first thing that was not Scion business - and Thancred latched onto it anyway despite the risks. "Reputation and coin are nigh-interchangeable in Ul'dah, that much I know. But Gridania's inner politics have always been rather obscure to outsiders such as myself. As I understand it, the circumstances of your birth largely dictate if you are welcome or not, and there is a very long list of the latter. Does that affect you as well?"
He had his answer almost immediately, though not the details of it: the Warrior shifted uncomfortably in her chair, crossing her legs with a rustle of her robes. She did not take another bite of her food, dragging the tins of her fork instead across the sauce that had puddled in the center of her dish.
"You know that padjals are born from hyur families in Gridania." She did not look at him directly, the pale grey of her eyes dyed a greener hue in the stained glass of the Canopy. "Most often to the great families such as the Yans and Sennas, but on occasion to smaller bloodlines. When one such line has been blessed, that family is watched afterwards in hope of further padjals to come. We... have only produced one padjal, several hundred years past on my father's side. They were the only offspring to their parents. We have had no others."
Such odds seemed poor, even for beings as rare as the blessed. Thancred fiddled with the handle of his teacup, taking care with his next question. "Do you wish you had been born padjali then?"
He expected some form of concession; he was surprised when, instead, the Warrior lowered her head further, turning her face aside as she stared at the ground. "It was... difficult upon my family, I'm told." Her hand neatly set the fork down, and then fled to her lap. "Upon the parents, in particular. Though they knew it was both an honor and a necessity to give up their child to Stillglade Fane, they could not adjust to the change. Every time they saw the person who was no longer their daughter, they experienced that loss anew. Never-aging, a mirror of the day they had lost her, given a new name and a new destiny. Grief claimed them both, eventually," she added softly, and then attempted a limpid shrug, a shuffle of her shoulders that communicated nothing but emptiness. "My family has always been torn between wanting another padjal - and dreading it."
Thancred sat back in his chair. Part of him was already storing away the information with the same efficiency as a smuggler coming into port; the rest was watching the rigidity of her body language, the story unfolding in the planes of her shoulders, her arms, her neck.
"I am sorry on behalf of your family. I imagine that even learning conjury must be a difficult subject," he admitted. "There must be quite a bit of pressure to continue fostering such talents, welcome or not."
The Warrior confirmed his guess a second time with a nod, almost immediately contradicting it with a shrug. "I am one of the better conjurers among my cousins, but none of our skills have sufficed to garner attention in Stillglade Fane. Our current generation... continues to fall short."
"And yet, none of them have slain a Primal, have they?" he encouraged her, overeager now that he had another piece of her history. "Nor have they saved a sylph elder from death by consumption. I knew you were remarkable the moment I laid eyes upon you."
But the reminders had the opposite effect of heartening her; the Warrior sighed, picking pointedly at the remaining vegetables on her plate. "And here I thought we'd get as far as an entire conversation without you attempting to bed me."
"If that's not to your taste, I'm good for several rounds of cards instead," he piped up hopefully. Perhaps that was what it was all about, a concern that he simply wanted her for a few bells in the sheets, and she was the sort who had no interest in such physical things - or at least his - whatsoever.
What few inroads he had made were already vanishing; the Warrior's expression was remote as she shook her head, her lips tucked in a wry, regretful frown. "You say things to please people, Thancred. You say them to everyone. You don't care who they are or what you tell them, so long as it makes the person accommodating at the end. Cards won't change that."
"On the contrary," he protested. "Your pleasure is my pleasure, noble Warrior."
It was meant to be charming. Thancred had delivered that same exact line thousands of times before. But the strain in his voice was plaintive instead of confident, and his smile was barely a wisp. He sounded as if he was begging her to just accept it, to just accept this level of interaction and not dig deeper, to let things be as they were: without questioning, without understanding why or how, just that he wanted so badly for her to be happy that she had no reason not to be.
"Then we should both find better ones," she replied.
He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what he could say, confronted by a person who wanted no comfort, and who expected no simple warmths from the world. It was as if the Warrior had given up on ever receiving a compliment that actually mattered to her so long ago that she wasn't even disappointed anymore; her voice was tired, not angry, as if the weather had brought a spat of unexpected rain into the afternoon, and she merely lacked a parasol.
When Thancred remained mute, helpless with futility, the Warrior relented with an audible sigh. "Order whatever you desire for the remainder of your meal," she suggested, standing up and briskly fetching her staff. "I will ask Mother Miounne to add it to my account."
With that, she turned away into the crowd, vanishing with the effortless ease of one who knew every twist and turn in the walkways: just another unimportant face among the rest of the strangers, leaving Thancred lost behind her.
"No," he whispered. The word crackled like an ember, stinging him with invisible brands upon his skin, prickling his cheeks. The heat of it could linger there forever, spelling out a gaoler's sentence upon him that could never be revoked - as if the battle with Ifrit had marked him irrevocably instead, and now he bore that censure upon his soul for all to read.
It had started out as a game, to try and make her smile. A game. A habit. A desire to encourage a friend. And then something greater had ignited: a plea of his own to be allowed to help her somehow, this Warrior who waded alone into the middle of endless battles, while everyone else nodded along and talked about what a selfless, sacrificing healer she was and never looked at her twice.
A person whom Thancred had failed to aid once when she was just starting out, and had failed ever since.
"No," he managed again. His voice was thick. "It is enough if I can simply please you."
It was Titan next that the Warrior set out to hunt. A second Primal, another series of crystal thefts and distressed beastmen. Another tragedy already unfolding, all because Thancred hadn't been cunning enough to catch it in time, while someone else had to clean up the consequences.
The Ascians were always a step in front of him, not matter how fast Thancred pushed himself. He lost sleep; he forgot meals, wolfing down bits of bread on the back of a chocobo. The condition of his gear slowly withered, lacking the time to stay in place long enough for proper repairs. He forgot where he was going. He lost track of where he'd already been.
If Thancred could only stop Lahabrea, then perhaps he could stem some of the casualties that were mounting by the day. If he could only catch the Ascian. He was so close.
But the Warrior had her own charge to follow. She went to Titan, and - once more - Thancred was not there to support her.
The next time he had full control over his wits again, much had changed. All three of the Grand Companies had united together with the Scions against the Garlean forces. Ultima Weapon had risen and been destroyed. The Black Wolf, thrown down. And Thancred - Thancred had been both victim and unwitting instigator, brought into the conflict through a method he never could have imagined.
His limbs all felt clumsy, as if the Ascian who had ridden him had not bothered to operate them properly, but had simply flung him about like a boneless puppet. He was a house whose doors had all been taken off their hinges and reattached to the wrong rooms. He did not know how Lahabrea had managed to take care of his body, what the man might have fed it or if he had given it enough sleep. There were a few new scars on Thancred's skin that he did not recognize. He could only wonder who might recognize him in turn, and for all the wrong reasons: strangers who had been harmed by his hands, people whose loved ones had been killed by a creature wearing his face.
His body might never feel entirely his own again, as if he was the one possessing it in turn: a renter who was merely next in line to borrow the cheap apartment of his bones.
The rest of the Scions fussed over his health, checking his forehead as if he might be running a fever - Yda yanking down her goggles to frown dubiously at his aether, before Papalymo cursed and elbowed her in the leg - but Thancred excused himself as quickly as he could to avoid the concern of their gazes. It was not terribly difficult to find a quiet corner alone. Most of the Scions were celebrating in the main rooms of the Waking Sands, laughing together as fresh rounds of ale kept being passed around; Thancred could hear the revel echoing distantly down the halls, the rumble of feet stamping the floor as they cheered.
The hallway was cool, musty in the manner of underground tunnels which had never seen the sun. The lamps simmered, fire crystals illuminating the hall without the accompanying risk of smoke. From a nearby chamber came a muffled shout of glee, dwindling away into silence as the merrymakers wandered on.
Thancred stared down at his hands, chafing at the ill fit of his own skin.
He heard the door at one of the ends of the hall creak open, and glanced up in time to see the Warrior taking a seat across from him on one of the other benches.
The line of the carpet stretched like a battlefront marker, a flag laid down in maroon and goldenrod. Her staff leaned against the bench, its tip pointed accusingly at his feet. He peeked up at her warily through his bangs. Even his hair was longer than it should have been, disheveled and badly cut: another matter to resent Lahabrea for.
"The other Scions say that you have been pushing yourself to extremes." Her voice, when it came, was mild. He could not tell if she was concerned. "That 'twas exhaustion that led you to become the Ascian's prey, hoping to spare us from endangerment by hunting our enemies out first."
"Aye." There was no use putting a good face on it now. Thancred had endured even Urianger's worried frown; he could not escape the remainder of the gauntlet. "And what a poor job I have done of it, to have only made matters worse for everyone else."
She arched an eyebrow, unimpressed. "It does seem futile, to hold one's self to an impossible standard and hope to save others by the end of it. Though... if you are a failure, I suppose I am no less the same."
Thancred glanced back up, surprised at the admission - and then frowned, distracted by the cut of her robes now that he had a better chance to study them. They were different from the last time he had seen her, stitched from a heavy white wool that had been tipped with red panels that slashed through the fabric like thin darts. The staff resting against the bench beside her was unfamiliar as well: a finely polished length of spruce topped by a bulb of white petals. She had kept the band of lace around her neck, now grey and ragged compared to the rest of her new finery, and it peeked over the top of her hood's collar.
But her boots were just as dirty as before, mud caked thick on new leather, and the hem of her robes was dusty and splotched. Whichever Primals she had conquered and Imperials she had fought, she had continued to do so on her own, trudging in and out of the maw of death itself.
"I am a White Mage now," she announced abruptly. "Inheritor of A-Towa-Cant's soul crystal. Accepted by the elementals, and recognized as an equal by the Seedseers Raya-O-Senna and A-Ruhn-Senna."
Thancred's shoulders jerked in surprise as he straightened up the rest of the way. It was another point of failure that he had neglected to notice something so important by now; it must have happened during his possession. There was so much he had to catch up on - too much.
But she sported no horns, though Thancred made certain to look carefully for where they might be hidden, craning his head even as she made a scornful roll of her eyes at his attention. "I thought only padjal were allowed?"
Her face made the smallest grimace - a tightening around the eyes - before it smoothed out with false ease. "And yet, I am here regardless," she remarked, diffident despite the underlying scowl. "There are no restrictions upon my travels. I am free to leave the Twelveswood as the Seedseers are not, and wander as I will. Wherever that may end up being."
She drew one of her feet underneath the bench, dragging her toes against the ground in clear reluctance. "I told you that my family has only ever been blessed once with a padjali child," she began. "Some of the other Houses in Gridania have begun to wonder if we have lost whatever favor the elementals had given to us - that we have insulted nature enough that they have turned away from us, and deserve to be scorned. My family has always wished for another child to grow their horns, and prove that we have not sinned. But they have also prayed just as fervently in secret for that day to never come."
Even though Thancred had not yet responded, the Warrior shifted her slender hands restlessly, tugging on the ends of her sleeves in a show of nerves that he had never seen before. It did not belong amidst the rest of her poise, not as he had come to know her. Her fingers fretted against the crimson gashes. "Somehow, when I was young, I latched onto the notion that if only I could become a great enough conjurer that even the elementals would notice, then I could salvage my family's reputation, and prove that we did not need to produce padjals in order to be worth respect. And yet, even that does not solve anything." The sudden bark of her laughter was harsh, bitter and shameless of it. "Though I've fulfilled the dream of becoming a White Mage, I've only made my family's situation that much worse. Now, all conjurers born to my family will be expected to reach such lofty achievements. No one is exempt."
She was speaking fatalistically towards the ground now, her mouth turned down grimly in its corners, as if she expected even the stones themselves to pass judgement. "Despite knowing all that... I find I can do naught else. Only charge forward, as if I am a chocobo that has only been taught to race one lane, and so even when given an empty field, I merely lower my head and run all the faster. So you see - I, too, know something about futility, Thancred. And I know you should not suffer for it."
As if her words were a sudden brush of air warning him of a cliff only ilms away, Thancred hesitated, wary of misspeaking enough to shatter the fragile camaraderie.
Before he could string together a proper response, however, the far door opened once more. Two of the Scions came through with a crate of supplies each in their arms, towing along some of the debris salvaged from the Castrum Meridianum. They nodded amicably to both Thancred and the Warrior as they passed, heads craned around the bulk of their burdens, chattering away about ceruleum conversion ratios in the fashion of madmen and engineers.
But the pause had given the Warrior time to collect herself, which Thancred regretted; the calm mask of her expression was already settling back into place before their visitors had even left. She had tucked away her own misery into a place so remote that it seemed a mere illusion now: a moment of weak, wishful thinking on Thancred's part from craving to know more about her.
"Thancred," she said quietly, once the hallway was still again, abandoned save for the two of them. She braced her slim hands on the edge of the bench, leaning forward. "My family is the sole reason I studied conjury. It was with them in mind that I agreed to become a Scion. It wasn't to heal the world, or defeat Garlemald, or to protect the city-states from Primals. They are the only people I fight to save."
She shook her head; wisps of her auburn hair drifted around her shoulders, escaped from her braids. "I am no one's champion. I have never been one. Everything I've done has been for my own sake. Not Eorzea's. This entire time, you've been caught up in hoping for a person who was never once real."
There it was. This was the knife the Warrior had carried in her pocket the entire time, ready to gut any unlucky passerby who veered too close - and she'd taken it out and had offered it to him hilt-first, a secret that he could use against her if he wished. It was hardly as if she had declared herself to be a Garlean spy. But reputation mattered for all of them, reputation and trust, and all Thancred could do was stare dumbly at it, at her, as the razor edges of her confession slipped through all the expectations he'd tangled himself up in and stole them away more deftly than he'd lifted any purse.
All his attempts to approach her must have seemed so laughably futile to her eyes. He never could have helped her. He hadn't even known her. It was the purest form of rejection imaginable. After all his lackluster attempts to keep pace with her, the Warrior had finally been forced to come to him directly, simply so she could say outright, you never saw me clearly to begin with, Thancred.
And he hadn't. Not this part. Not the part which was the most important piece of her, worth enough that she had willingly thrown her entire life and happiness towards its cause.
The fault of it belonged to no one but Thancred himself. The Warrior had never wavered in refusing his flirtations. She had been honest with him all along, resolutely keeping him at a distance even as he had only tried to muddle closer in the wrong direction. He had been the one trying to ease her burden the same way that he'd scrambled to help Minfilia, except that the Warrior had never wanted him to, and she'd never asked, and even though she had become so important to him, it felt as if she was laying it down as naked fact: he had only been reaching out to an illusion, and nothing more.
It was mortifying. His eyes stung. He cupped a hand over his face, not wanting her to see the mess of his own expression when even he didn't know how badly it had shaken him. His mind floundered, trying to piece together her intentions when the rest of him only wanted to shove it all away and laugh at his own humiliation somewhere safely in private. He could not bear the thought of being so pathetic that he had to add the burden of his feelings to her as well, shoving even that responsibility onto her task list like another summoned Primal for her to quell.
He heard a rustle of cloth, and then the click of her staff as she crossed the hallway, taking a seat beside him on the bench.
"Thancred," she said again, and he only made a jerk of his head in an aborted shake, agonized into silence. Her fingers settled gently atop his other hand; abandoning all dignity, Thancred turned his palm over and gripped her back tightly, clumsily, desperate for that living contact as if the darkness of his closed eyes were an abyss that he had been flung into, and her touch was the only proof of a world without. "Listen to me, Thancred." Her fingers were equally strong as they held him back, her knuckles pinching his thumb. "Listen. There is no noble warrior out there sacrificing themselves for the good of Eorzea. That person never existed. And that means," she continued, even as he felt his shoulders hunch further in misery, "that the person you've been comparing yourself to this entire time? She isn't real either. She never has been. You're free from her. You're free from me."
He felt the shudder of his own exhalation, a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. It came out as half a sob, strangled past any recognition by his own refusal to acknowledge it. This time, the edge of her words had slid in past his ribs and emptied all the air out of his lungs, sawing him open as bare as a jack-and-jig after a mugging, before he'd be tossed in the tide.
He hadn't disappointed her. Not in her eyes. He hadn't fallen short after all, trying to assist a hero who was so pious that he could not even kneel at her feet. The only ideal Thancred had been chasing had been his own.
Which meant that he was the one who could choose to finally set it down.
Barely steady enough to trust himself, Thancred gingerly took his other hand away from his eyes, blinking at the stones of the floor, the Warrior's muddy boots nestled up against his own. He felt her begin to gather herself, fingers going slack in his grip as she prepared to stand up and leave yet again, as she always had. She had completed what she had come there to say. Now, she would withdraw back into her solitude while the rest of the world spun on - and suddenly, Thancred realized what he had sensed about her all along, even when he had been mistaken as to its true nature. Only now did it all fit together, when it had almost been too late.
There was one more secret to her, and this one, Thancred had uncovered on his own.
"How lonely has it been?" he asked quietly. "This entire time, trying to shoulder all of this on your own without letting anyone else see what you've been going through?"
She turned a startled look back towards him, caught fully off-guard and unable to hide it. They were small motions, ones that seemed barely significant enough to mark - but Thancred recognized the importance of them now, after he had been watching long enough to know how rare they were. Her pale eyes widened a hair's breadth; her lips parted slightly. Her gaze darted to his own and then away again, insect-quick: a glimmer of sudden hope that she was already gathering herself to reject.
"About as lonely as you, I'd imagine," she answered softly.
"I see." Thancred felt the tips of the Warrior's fingers move against his own, like a fox stirring uneasily in its den. "Shall we both stay here a while, then, and be lonely together?"
It was a suggestion that was as far away from flirting as Thancred had ever been in his life. Each word was painfully honest, artless in its vulnerability. But the Warrior's weight relaxed back onto the bench beside him, and - gradually - her hand did too, curling into his larger body. He let his grip go slack just enough that he did not have to fear bruising her; their fingers stayed messily entangled, his palm wrapping around hers like two helpless animals tucked together for the last scrap of warmth in a world of winter.
The door at the far end of the hallway opened once more, letting in the raucous noises of the celebration still ongoing. Several more crates went by, this time escorted by Alphinaud; the boy was too preoccupied, thankfully, to spare them more than a glance as he trotted past. He couldn't have seen much even if had looked. Both of their hands were tucked snugly together in the space between them on the bench, obscured by the long bell of the Warrior's sleeve and the folds of Thancred's tunic. There was room, if either of them wished, to let go.
But she didn't take her hand away, and he didn't either. Neither one of them moved. Their interlaced hands were hidden like a fingersmith's trick, overlooked and ignored as a whole cartload of broken magitek parts were hauled past, argued over by engineers waving drunkenly at each other.
Then the doors shut again, and they were alone.
It felt wrong to disrupt the restored silence, but Thancred risked it anyway. "Everyone joins the Scions for their own reasons." He spoke to the air itself, as if confronting the Warrior directly would only send her running again. They were two bricks in opposite walls, professionals passing one another like perfect strangers in an alleyway. Nothing more. "You don't fight for the sake of glory - and that means you won't be swayed by it either. Nor by flattery. Even before you became a White Mage, you could have chosen to return to Gridania and make use of the fame of being a Primal-slayer. But you kept yourself out here. You're walking this path alone, without anyone's acknowledgement of who you even are. And that's a strength which is remarkable under any situation," he finished, more forcefully than he expected - but it was no less honest, and he knew that that was what mattered to her, beyond any honey-tongued simpering.
He did shift his body then towards her, only turning his hand so that his palm fit against hers more easily, the awkwardness of their bodies gradually finding ways to settle together. "For me, you are the greatest Warrior of Light I could ever know. Even if," he added fiercely, "no one sees the true reason why."
He stopped himself there, before he could venture into the dangerous territory of rambling on further. A lifetime spent making easy assurances to others had prepared an entire lexicon on his tongue: that her bravery was an inspiration to them all, that she would surely triumph over any obstacle that even the Ascians might bring against her.
But Thancred held it all back, biting down every flippant word. Finally, he risked a glance in her direction, as discreetly as he could manage.
That was the intention, at least. But the moment that he caught sight of the Warrior's face, all of Thancred's plans dissolved like ash in the breeze. Her expression had softened, the perpetual tension finally easing; the corners of her mouth were curving up with genuine satisfaction. He was staring openly now, all his yearning as exposed as if she had sliced open his shirt with a knife made of metal instead of her heart, and he could do nothing but tremble as she laid its point against the hollow of his throat.
Her fingers twined the rest of the way through his.
"Well," she said, the broad smile blooming across her face like a dawn flower in the sun. Her eyes - the warm grey of moonstones, unforgettable in their clarity - flicked up to him, and remained there. "Mayhap one person does."