#ⅩⅣ fritillaria imperialis ( a/g. )

[heirbane]

Gaius: pronounces "Altansarnai" with ease

Also Gaius: mishears Alta when she says "Hau" and inadvertently names his own son "Howl"

[heirbane]

he could elbow her in the face. that's all.

[heirbane]

i was talking to Bree about possible stand-in codenames for the WOL prior to the empire knowing of their true name. i can see there being a sort of insider title given to the WOL as they quickly became a problem - both to be more specific when speaking about the adventurer among high-ranking military officials, but to obscure their target should anyone manage to get into their comm system (re: Cid's Garlean tech knowledge).

for Alta, she was preemptively dubbed Drakaina - a persistent presence in old Garlean folklore that depicted a human woman with draconic or snake-like features. given Garlemald's emigration into colder climates, where snakes and lizards became extremely uncommon, such a title befits the Au Ra: few were seen in Garlemald at all, let alone those from the Steppe. (eventually, it is shortened to Kaina out of brevity's sake.)

for Arye, Gaius sees the man first as the creature often butchered for easy meals while out in the snowy wilderness. Nivea calceamentum is the closest term that Garleans have for ice-furred hare, as there is no native word for such a creature that didn't exist much in their ancestral land. (hares, most assuredly, did. those that stayed persistently white and with such comically sized feet did not.) he never did truly call them by the full Garlean-adjacent term: Arye had always been Nivea, simply a term for snow.

(and, for funsies, since i learned this doing my research: there are multiple, multiple named meteor shower events, one of which is named after a heroic figure in Greek myth... and is also a constellation made up of many other stars. given how well that falls into place with Meteor and the WOL's shards, as well as him being part of a larger company - the scions - i can see Gaius temporarily dubbing him Perseus.)

[heirbane]

WHAT WERE YOUR LAST WORDS?

well this absolutely doesn't make my main ships go nearly full circle.

[heirbane]

Gaius calls Alta by her full given name in Praetorium and it is one of the only times he is able to get heirsbane against her skin.

So few Eorzeans ever properly attempt her first name in its entirety. By the time A Realm Reborn comes to be, she has given up on introducing herself as such - to the vast majority, she is simply Alta.

She hates how her full name sounds in most of their mouths anyroad - Alphinaud especially, with his exacting, confidently incorrect enunciation. (It isn't until after ARR that she sits him down and goes through it, syllable by syllable, so that there is no misunderstanding any further. She had been stubborn, not wishing to simplify herself for the overconfident boy leader, but they were both humbled by the Bloody Banquet. She gave him another chance to try again, and in the years following, he got quite good at Xaelan words, much to her pride.)

So when he calls out to her, her name pronounced just the way she grew up hearing it, without a hint of accent or judgement - without the casual racism that came with a name unfamiliar to Eorzean tongues - it catches her on the back foot.

She still bears the scar. Even now, half a decade since, hearing her name, whole and perfected on his tongue - ... it brings a fondness to her heart she can't quite place.

[heirbane]

And when you feel the world wrapping around your neck, don't succumb.

[heirbane]

“   All the greatest loves end in violence. ”

He had noticed her ring.

It had caught his attention on more than one brief occasion as they traveled. While the Warrior of Light often kept it hidden within the collars of her tunics, it came untucked now and again: especially with how frequently she bent to upend her stomach.

Gaius didn't pretend to wholly understand what burdens she had shouldered on her trip. She had fed him bits and pieces, of a land like theirs but skewed, a cracked mirror. That many existed, pieces and particles of a larger whole: and, much like other shards, the Ascians had hoped to bring upon its demise.

Not by dark aether, as they had done before. But with light. With the selfsame element she fought with, existing in the space between nature and holiness, of life and its overabundance. It had skewed her own body's balance, filling her with so much light aether that it was eating her alive.

It was as if even the food she attempted to ingest was poisoned. She ate little and less as they traveled, nearly throwing herself off their feathered mount to rid herself of the sustenance not even a bell later.

It was in the moments after that he caught glimpses. When he held a kerchief and a waterskin out for her to take, when the cracked, dull piety materia glowed with the half-hearted Esuna attempt.

It had not been his place to ask. But he had asked anyway, hoping to remove her mind from her malady.

"I was - ... almost wed. Summers ago."

She picked at what she had foraged. Mushrooms, rolanberries, and a small piece of jerky from his dried rations. Beside her, Gaius sat, a tin mug full of instant coffee he had brewed over the fire. The giant Gridanian chocobo curled up beside their makeshift tent, dozing, face tucked under one wing.

"I met him - ... trying to find Cid's ship. He was good to me. I - ... didn't understand Ishgardian traditions. So we compromised."

She stared into the small fire, as if picking her words as carefully as she did the morsels of her dinner. In the dark, she could almost hear the whisper of the elementals, their words soft and kind.

"I... haven't returned to them as much as I should. His family. When you suggested the astrologians - ... that they could reverse the imbalance ... it felt right. To return. To see them again."

They were not far from Ishgard now, but she had gotten considerably more ill the longer she stayed unbalanced.

Gaius could only hope that Ishgard would recognize the Warrior of Light when he brought her to the Gates... and that they did not bear arms at the state she may be in.

He spoke, breaking the quiet between them, the melancholic lull that took over their camp. He wasn't sure if the words were right, or if any right ones existed at all.

But he tried anyway. His Emperor had lost his wife to her own son's birth; he had to watch as Zenos slit his father's throat. The love was different there: a man to his wife, a man and his need for violence. But it existed, he thought.

Man's love killed no matter what shape it took. His words seemed to solidify in her bones.

What love ended in happiness? When would it ever be peaceful?

She didn't think it could be.

[heirbane]

I'm sorry about the delay 💕💕💕

great love,  like a great country or a great leader even ... is a flawed one.

Flawed.

He remembered, suddenly, of the bust that had been commissioned, the feast and celebration that had been held upon his promotion. So few held the Legatus position in Garlemald, and those who held the honor oft took the title to their grave. He was the youngest to have earned such a promotion.

It was wrong. He recalled how odd it was to see himself cast in white, a phantom staring back at him, youthful and perfected and wrong all at once. It was as if they had taken the idea of him and not the truth and cut away at the marble based on that.

He wasn't a person to them. He was an ideal, he knew, shrouded behind his helm and the technology that augmented his capabilities. The bust was not flawed. It was perfected in a way that didn't - that couldn't - exist.

Maybe it was. Maybe perfection was a deficiency. He had reached for it for decades and decades and thought he had claimed it, once upon a time.

There was no such thing. The bust the Empire had made to honor him was wrong. Maybe there was no way to make it right.

He wondered what had become of them all. They had lined the main ballroom, one of many that Varis had decreed excessive once Solus passed; likely they had been moved into storage, busts of a dozen and more men simply staring into the dark. Had the imperfect recreations of Garlemald's best survived the end of the world? Had they crumbled, broken into pieces just as the Emperor had been, marble dusting the tile like dried blood?

Or were they still standing - still, still - staring into the ruin and waiting for perfection?

He heard the sound of lips smacking, swiftly followed by the warbling of new life. He pulled himself from the snow, from the man that still lived in Garlemald, forcing himself back into the present. It was dark, the midnight breeze carrying salt and warmth through the cracked window, and she was calling his name as if she knew he was abroad and not beside her.

"Take him," she said. It was not a suggestion or a request. The babe was already half-asleep, as if it had been lulled simply by being against her skin. She had pulled him ashore, certainly, but it was the weight of the infant that truly had him back in Werlyt, sweet-smelling and warm and impossibly his.

She re-buttoned her sleeping shirt and pulled the blankets back around her ribs. He felt her curl into his side, a palm stroking his spine as he stared down at the recreation of himself.

He was just as the bust had once been - almost perfect. The boy had scarcely seen a sunrise and was already hale and whole in ways he could never imagine, youthful and flawless in ways he couldn't remember being. But there were wrongs there, too, already memorized in the hours he had existed, in the lilt of his tiny ears and the darkened marks upon his cheeks.

The cracks in the marble weren't shortcomings. The hand on his back had fallen; her cheek pressed into his upper arm, exhaustion heavy in her wheezy sleep.

He was flawed. He lacked a third eye. He lacked any semblance of Auri blood, a muddled, incoherent combination of them both, warm and true where he tucked into Gaius' arms and snored.

There was no better thing, he thought.

[heirbane]

"you look good with my hands around your throat" Gaius x Your WOL

It was a game. It all was, wasn't it?

She had scarcely pulled the washroom door shut behind her when his hand encircled her throat. It was slow, as it oft began: testing the waters, giving her time to decide she wasn't quite in the mood to play. The wall behind her was slick with condensation as the fire crystals in the bathwater bubbled, warming it so thoroughly it nearly seemed to boil.

Even if she had something witty to say in response, it was snuffed out under the breadth of his palm. She could feel the callouses on his fingertips on the back of her neck, the blood pumping in even time under his well-placed thumb.

Her lips began to tingle. One bare leg fumbled, attempting to get purchase against his thigh to bolster herself. For a glimmer of a moment, she had relief: he hoisted her by her thigh, bringing her up off the ground by several ilms and relieving some of the strain she felt.

It did not last long.

Her tail eloped his scarred wrist, the serrated scales and the jewelry adorning the thorned ends digging into the thickened, mangled skin. He didn't have much sensation there anymore, she knew. But the stillness of his body betwixt her legs told her he had just enough to feel it coil, the thorned end sharp and dangerous against his flesh.

This was a dance they were familiar with, a waltz they took turns leading. She had nearly killed him once, and she had nearly perished on more than one occasion, the both of them brought back from the brink of death's sea just as the taste of saltwater touched their tongues.

They flirted with dying more than each other, a controlled free fall. They were as afraid of each other as they were death.

It had claimed neither of them yet. And so they danced, feet dipping into the shores of dark waters, teasing, coaxing.

The pinpricks of adrenaline began to seep in. Her knees dug into his hips, the tip of her tongue as blue as her lips were becoming. He watched her eyelashes flutter as she struggled to keep wholly cognizant, the rings that encircled her irises a shade of midnight as they stared at each other.

Her tail tightened around his wrist. The warmth of blood trickled onto her thigh, so startling and unexpected that her eyes flashed open and her heel sank into his back - once, twice, a third time.

The gasp that tore from her chest had her small torso nearly against his. Her tail unraveled from it's serpentine grip. Even as her chest heaved, desperate to rid the static from her mind and the numbness in her limbs, a shaking hand came to wipe at the bloody slices in his forearm.

"I'm -"

"Quiet."

He didn't give her much of a choice. She was still sucking in gulps of air when his lips met hers, a wolf that had smelled blood and was desperate to gorge on it, to play with the food he had trapped so deliciously.

Her bath would still be warm whenever they finished, he knew, and be needed more then than now.

It would have to wait.

[heirbane]

something something gaius has a wolf fang necklace, not because he's self-centered but because allie made it for him over a decade ago. it's had to be reinforced and re-wrapped with age, as she was maybe seven summers old when she first made it, and the leather cord has had to be replaced a time or two. he's scarcely taken it off at any time since he was gifted it, a child's attempt at a charm of safety, and - to allie's benefit - he hasn't died yet, so.

( he requests a similar offering for his partner, a little bit of his daughter and a little bit of himself in a gift that is incredibly unlike him. gaius is forever a practical gift giver at heart: but he has been proven, time and time again, that hope is practical, and it gives allie something to work on as she recovers from her trauma. the leather-corded necklace is of far better make than the one gaius has on his person, the thin, copper wire bent smoothly and with purpose, and is presented to his partner as an offering from both of them.

for their safety. for his peace of mind. for an old wolf to travel when he cannot.)

[heirbane]

Hau / Howl has been made. (no, i didn't finish my art of Gaius. Shhhh.)

Tidbits under the cut:

Formally - on any paperwork that may require his full given name - he is listed as Hau Hotgo-Baelsar. However, if he were to introduce himself, it would be Howl. Just Howl.

(Alta is forever uncertain what name he ought to have. Naming him after a tribe that only exists in memory feels cruel: naming him after her adopted tribe may make him an outsider, as he is scarcely Xaela in any noticeable way... but to call him Hau Fortemps, after the first man she loved and the family that has continued to keep her in their hearts, carries a weight she fears. He isn't Haurchefant's son, and she frets over the implication such naming could cause when he presents neither Elezen nor Au Ra.

She would much rather the boy take Gaius's name, as it clears her son of any weight that the Warrior of Light's name may cause... and that he would match his sister, Allie.

Gaius doesn't believe another child should be burdened by his name, either. Many of his children have already perished: his name carries disgrace and death and little else. He appreciates that it may bind his remaining daughter to his firstborn, but is of the opinion that the weight of Alta's name would be carried far more favorably than his own.

They are certain of a few things: he swore she said she wanted to name him Howl, and that, in his defense, he had never seen Haurchefant's name written out until they visited Ishgard... weeks after his birth.)

He was born with the third eye and what appeared to be small birthmarks on the shells of his ears. Sometimes babes were born with marks, the midwife assuaged them. He would likely grow out of them.

He did not. Howl grew into them. It took them nigh on a year for them to recognize the splotches were, in fact, silhouettes of where his scales should have grown in, had he been wholly Au Ra. Since they failed to manifest, the boy simply seems to be swathed in discolored patches of skin. They are darkest around his ears, cheeks, and back, but very little of his skin remains an even tone regardless.

From the moment he came to be, Howl was, perhaps, the opposite of his name. The little Raen midwife in Terncliff called him an 'easy baby': he was quiet to a nearly concerning extent. But he, like any other child, had his tells, and - voice or not - he had both his parents and Allie wrapped around his finger with ease.

[heirbane]

"So should I pat you on the head and call you a good boy or is that too on the nose, Baelsar? After all, the wolf has lost some of his edge, no?" It is indeed a day that ends in the letter 'y' and therefore once again Nerva must find someone to harass and probably get yelled at by.

Garlemald had fallen. The towers constructed and felled, the broken, fragmented remains of it's father put in a pyre all it's own, as was tradition for the land.

(once, he was told, they buried their people: Locus Amoenus had a more temperate climate, making such an act viable. After being pushed into Garlemald, however, they adapted, the funeral pyre serving as a celebration of life, the fire a reminder of the deceased's warmth in life.

Maybe if the Eorzeans had burnt their dead, Zenos would have been felled for good all those years ago, but they, too, put their corpses in a box to rot.)

Garlemald had fallen, and yet, things remained the same, as if time and change mattered naught. The snow fell; the wolves of the surrounding evergreen forests howled; and the rabbit still managed to find his sore spots to nibble upon.

He had not been a boy since he had entered the military, he wanted to state. He hadn't seen life as a boy since his head was shaved and a gun was placed in his hand, stripping him of his hearing in his right ear within five summers. He wanted to nip back, catch the rabbit's nape betwixt his teeth before it could bolt away, not truly a warning and not truly a bite.

It couldn't be, for they were correct. His teeth had become round; his claws had been clipped and filed. He raised his hackles and bore his teeth but he allowed many to brush through his fur, his growling no longer a threat.

Was it his age, or was it the lack of title? Was it the woman he bedded? He had heard many a sas and tol chortle about partners nigh neutering them, softening their bite, mouth no longer used to kill but to carry kits to and fro.

He felt the rabbit's hand in his hair, fingers the same dark brunette as his locks, and scarcely found it in him to recoil.

Time and company had, indeed, neutered the Legatus. He had yet to find it in him to mind.

"I've not been a boy in half a century, Valinus," he spoke dryly, letting out an exhale heavy with contemplation. "If you are trying to reduce my title from 'wolf' to 'dog', do as you wish. Mayhaps explain the title change to the little adventurer, lest she take offense on my behalf."

(Gaius needn't say the Black Wolf had long been slaughtered, throat removed in Praetorium. They knew. They all knew. Perhaps, he thought, a hound was not such a bad thing to be - Dalamud had been one such beast, a lesser moon that wove between Menphina's feet, or so the Eorzean fables went.

A grizzled, graying hound to rest in respite at the adventurer's feet... no, it was not such a bad thing to be.)

[heirbane]

“no one is meant to be all alone.  that’s not how humans are built.�� you don’t need to do all this on your own. ”

No one is meant to be all alone.

Gaius knew this. Somewhere, in the crookedness of old broken bones and in the knot that settled into his throat, he knew this. It was what had caused the downfall of his mother in the years after he joined the military, death after death crippling her until she wasted away into nothingness.

He wanted to remember his mother fondly. He wanted to remember her as she had been for most of her life and the beginning of his, managing both him and his infant brother as his father worked in the mountains. But most of what he recalled was after his father's demise, how she curled into herself like a wilting flower, the edges of her being so withered that he wasn't sure if any amount of love would bring her back.

(Deep down, he knew now: it wouldn't have. But as a boy, he had hoped and begged that his mother would return to him even as the woman failed to come to terms with her beloved's death. And then his baby brother became ill, and like plucking the final browned petal from around her head, she had nothing left.)

He hadn't understood then, barely thirteen summers and surviving on caught game and stolen goods. He had wanted her to remember he existed. He had wanted to matter, for her to rise from her grief and know he was still alive past it all.

He understood now, his children's deaths bloodying his hands without a corpse to bury or cremate. He understood now, the grief like a noose around his throat, like he had stepped off a cliff surrounding the little town and was simply waiting to perish on the rocks below before being drug out to sea.

He understood. He had a child to love and care for past his grief, a child just as broken and scared as he had been, and yet he could do little but rest his head in his hands and plea for death to take him, too.

"A father should not have to bury his children," Gaius spoke. His voice was nothing in the dark, a bare sliver of life muffled behind his hands where he held back the veritable storm that wished to upend him. The sea breeze whispered through the cracked bedroom window; the bed beside him sagged as she sat, a small hand anchoring itself onto his thigh.

A stake. A piece of twine 'round the sagging plant, forcing it upright. A piece of the sun, desperate to bring life back into him.

"A child should not have to lose their father," she replied. "Not like this."

Not like this.

He bowed further. His elbows rested upon his knees, digging his palms into his eyes and trying to breathe past the grief that threatened to drown him.

(Maybe this was his penance. Maybe this was the cost he paid, blood for blood, suffering for suffering, for slaughtering other men's children and babes. Maybe this was what he deserved.)

"This was my due," Gaius spoke. "I -"

Her fingers dug into his thigh.

"No."

The gentleness was gone. No longer was she tending to downtrodden flowers but ripping weeds and ivy from the garden, a sharpness to her tone that caused him to bleed without realizing she had even quicked him.

"Their suffering - is not on your hands. Their fate was not deserved. I know - ... your heart. You cannot wallow over the some, or it will become the all."

The Warrior of Light's hand climbed up his arm like ivy, prying one of his palms from his face to squeeze it between her own.

Her sliver of sun burned him. It was not the first time. It would not be the last.

"Grieve," she spoke quietly. "Tonight. But tomorrow - ..."

"Tomorrow," he agreed wearily. "Tomorrow, and the next."

@ansonmount

[heirbane]

(And maybe this will be no different. Maybe he will hold them like he held Zenos, two babes with decades between, and ruin them like mold rots a bushel of apples. Maybe he'll peer into another set of blue eyes and watch them dull and flatten. Maybe that is his fate, he thinks - to kill heirs by blade and by touch alike.

But he doesn't want to. He hasn't wanted much his entire life, his dreams and aspirations for a homeland that no longer exist, his career spent for a city in ruins, for an Empire just as rotten as he - and he doesn't want to.

He had killed enough men. He had slaughtered enough children. He had put his own to rest. Gaius doesn't want to rot and ruin anymore.

He just wants it to work for once - for him to touch something and not have it fall apart. Just once.)

[heirbane]

It takes Gaius like three or five days to hold his own baby because he was convinced his hands are too dirty with what he's done that nothing good will come of it. All the children he's held or otherwise cared for have had poor cards dealt to them, from his own adopted children, to Zenos and Cid.

He isn't much one to air out his fears. They're vulnerabilities for people to exploit, and for nigh half a century he's forged himself into the suit of armor he wore as a Legatus. It's only been the last five or six years that he's begun to see his faults for what they are, and accept them with any modicum of grace - that faults and failures simply exist, and no amount of baring his teeth to the fear of being known will stop them from being so.

But he still hesitates. He does not name them; he has no pet name or nicety for them in the womb. They are a fragile thing, between existence and unreality, something he doesn't believe he truly deserves.

(She had loved him enough to come back. She was brave enough to see his bared teeth and his self-inflicted wounds from trying to pry his failures from his being, and she stayed anyway, carding fingers through the sticky blood in his fur.)

And yet he could not repay her the favor. When they become true, a breathing, wailing thing, still he waits. When they both are hale and hearty after the ordeal of being born, he still waits.

It is not until she insists that he hold his son that he lets a fractured piece of light seep in, hearing it whisper: maybe he can have this. Maybe he can.

(The blood on his hands are not felt by them. The blood on their mother's isn't, either, oblivious to everything but the fact that they are alive. What came before is of no consequence to a babe: it is simply what comes after that matters.)

[heirbane]

He had done the same to her, he remembered - moons and moons ago, in a time that felt too far away and too close at the same time. Before the world nearly ended. Before he had to command a misfit group of Werlytians to bring their all to bear against a Blasphemy.

It had been just a handful of months, he knew, but recovery tended to happen in both a vacuum and all at once. The star was recovering. Terncliff was being built up, and Alta's garden atop the cliff outlook had bloomed, the opalescent flowers showing every villager a different face.

His adventurer was showing him one he had yet to see on her. It was just as new, a color in a new shade. Cid had come to have Allie test drive a new vehicle, something small and single-person, intended to traverse all sorts of terrain. The house was quiet and empty as a result.

Well, as quiet and as empty as it could be with them sprawled atop his bed - their bed. Vaguely, Gaius could hear the bustle of the small town outside the bedroom window, and wondered if the sounds she would wrench from his being would carry.

She was testing uncharted waters, careful but determined to see a new shade of him, too.

Alta's hand was small but impactful on the column of his throat. Behind her, he felt her tail thumping the bed, half eager and half anxious. She sat at his side, feet tucked under his calf to keep her toes warm, her other hand slick against his skin as it adventured between his thighs.

He licked his lips, parting them - intending, he knew, to fill the quiet, to spur her on like one would a chocobo. Before a syllable could even rise from his lungs she had tightened her grip around his throat, the apple in her palm and her fingers pressing into the skin.

She couldn't have enveloped his neck with both hands circled if she had wanted to. But she was trying, trepidation pushed away in lieu of exploring his pleasure, and it was more than enough for his cock to bob against his stomach. 

Alta hummed. It was a soft, playful sound, fitting the way she kissed his collar and jaw, but like a poisoned fruit he tasted the danger that lied beneath.

She leaned forward, lips just grazing his ear, and murmured, "good."

(Never in his life had he wished to apologize to a God, but now - fully and deliciously at the mercy of Alta and her chosen deity - he wondered if it was too late to beg.)