#✒️ edmont ; hcs.

[nymfaia-archive]

Once, Alta believed she would have gone to the ends of the world with her knight. Once, in between a bloody banquet and being charged with heresy, she thought she had everything she truly could have wanted.

Edmont doted on her, one hand on his cane and one always cupping her cheek, taking her in as if he had known her every nook and cranny like his own children, as if he could peer into her soul and find exactly what she needed to hear.

And then she lost her partner, and Edmont feared he had not only lost his son, but his would be daughter-in-law, too.

Even as they grieved and as their hurts ached less and less, Alta was never fully who she had been when he first met her. No longer did she drop in and sleep the night at the manor as time allowed - and, even if she did, she curled into Haurchefant's room, desperately trying to seek even a flicker of his existence still there.

When Edmont purchased her a small cottage in the Firmament, it was intended to be a new start. Maybe the manor was too much for her. Ishgard would forever be her home, but maybe loss still curled in the corners of the Fortemps quarters, like cold air leaking through an improperly sealed window.

(He needn't say he worried for her. He needn't say he could see the whole of the Firmament from where the Pillars towered, the tiny home lights like candles in the distance, and even without the Fortemps knight stationed at her cottage on her stints there, he had it's location memorized. Her lights coming on were few and far between, ships in the dark, but it brought him hope all the same: that maybe the Warrior of Light was rebuilding, just like Ishgard.)

He visited on days he noticed her lights were on. Travelling to the new construction was not something Edmont had done much of: it was far for him and his limp, and he much preferred to stay close to home. But the fresh air often did him well, and getting the occasional chance to greet Francel was yet another boon to his visit.

Her little home was fairly barren. She had, with his aid, furnished it to the barest degree: a small table for two sat in the kitchen, and a long, Elezen sized couch sat ahead of the fireplace. But she was always happy to see him and to fix him tea or cocoa, curling up at the table on warm days or on the couch together when it was cold.

And then she vanished.

Aymeric had little and less for him. She had been summoned abroad, he thought, and was busy with a threat there. Communication betwixt the lands were difficult, but no news had to be good news, Aymeric hoped.

The moon had showed it's face well over twelve times before the light came back on in her cottage. Edmont believed he had been seeing things; but Artoirel told him true, that she had come back to Ishgard after her journey, but was under close watch by the Astrologians.

When he next visited, it was to simply ensure she had what she needed. When she opened the door, thin bodied and sallow skinned, he was stunned. Of all the adventures she had gone off to, so few had treated her this poorly.

(And when she hugged him, clinging to his coat as if she scarcely believed she would see him again, he wondered, what exactly, the Scions had put her through.)

But slowly - slowly, as days turned into weeks and more - her light began to stay on more often. And then, finally, the knight that stood guard was dismissed. Something had changed.

When he visited next, it was not her who answered the door. It was a tall, dark-skinned Garlean, staring down at Edmont with an expression between guilt and ease.

"Come in," he said. That was all.

The sheer change in her cottage told him much of what he needed to know. Boxes, both from the manor and from the Rising Stones, had littered the living space for moons and more. They had now disappeared: her knickknacks and things displayed on the shelving around the fireplace. Tataru's blankets hung off the back of her couch, and further furniture had been procured: a coffee table, a bench to store shoes, a coat rack.

It was no longer a shell of a home, and Edmont was beginning to realize whomever had helped her unpack her things had done far and away more than just that. And when he was invited to sit down in the kitchen, a plate full of breakfast food not quite Ishgardian placed ahead of him, he knew it had to do with the Garlean.

So they talked. Two grown men around a cramped table, mugs of dark coffee and food that Edmont had scarcely heard of, let alone tried, being eaten in relative quiet.

He was from Garlemald. He had faced her in battle, years and years ago, and had been left for dead. But fate had more for him than simply death, and they crossed paths like two moons orbiting the star. She had helped bury his children and find solace in his grieving.

Edmont could understand that, at the very least.

Haurchefant and Alta's affair had not been Edmont's story to tell - not that he needed to. Alta had told the man of her past partner. She had spoken highly enough of the family, Gaius said, that he recognized the retired Count from stories alone.

She wished she still had him, she had said. She wished things were different.

(Edmont could understand that, too.)

When she finally graced their presence, sleepy eyed and bare faced, she scarcely had eyes for either of them: she had been awoken by the smell of home cooking and brewing coffee. It was only after she poured a mug for herself and stuffed a dough ball in her mouth, humming with delight at how similar it was to food from her homeland, that she realized not just one man was watching her with grand amusement - but two.

"Alta," Edmont asked, aching fingers wrapped around his cooling mug of coffee, "I am happy to see you truly yourself again. He has done much and more for you, it seems."

She looked from man to man, from father figure to partner, her tail slowing in it's sway. Gaius had done more than she could say. He had seen the state of her home and put it together for her; he had combed the markets for food resembling ones from the Steppe, hoping to find something she could keep down.

He had pulled her from the edge of nonexistence when she scarcely had been able to do the same for him.

"He has," Alta said quietly. "I'm - ... glad."

(The next time she sees him, she is at the manor, coat bundled tight around her being. The end of the star had been avoided: Emmanellain had made certain that Edmont knew his youngest son's role in the whole affair. He had neglected to state, however, that his sister by choice had been with child, her return back to Ishgard delayed not only by injury but by status.

But she did, in fact, return - and not just by herself, but with the Garlean and a babe at her chest.

It was not the happy ending she had expected. She had wished, once upon a time, that she would see such a future with Haurchefant.

But she hoped his pure, hopeful soul would return to them, and had named the babe in his honor.

Edmont had not wept since he had said goodbye to his son. Now he was weeping as he said hello to his adopted grandson.

It was not the happy ending he expected, either. But it was happy nonetheless.)

[nymfaia-archive]

Gaius and Edmont being roughly the same age but Gaius becoming a father and Edmont becoming a grandfather to Alta's child is so fucking funny to me

[nymfaia-archive]

casual reminder that i hc that edmont & the countess were with child before they got married, making artoirel’s birthday about six months after their wedding. and that the high houses turn a blind eye to it bc i’m sure it’s common knowledge to them that a married woman’s first baby always comes early. honk.

[nymfaia-archive]

ORIGIN OF EDMONT’S CANE / WAR WOUNDS.

   Edmont was not his parent’s only child, nor their first: until he was nineteen summers old, he had been the high house’s spare, with Albain being three years his senior. While he was poised to become the next Count when their own father retired, Albain did not allow his position to keep him from the frontlines of the Dragonsong War.

    And, as younger brothers are wont to do, Edmont followed in his footsteps as soon as he was able.

   Albain, nor Edmont, was never intended to see much of the war itself. While the eldest brother had proven himself worthy to be deployed at all, his family name kept him at the back of platoons and during excursions. It was one such presumably safe excursion that took Albain to the Steel Vigil, where Edmont was still a new recruit.

    The aevis and wyvern surrounding the area had been as docile as feral dragons could be up until that point, or so those who were stationed at the Vigil would claim. It was that early evening when the brother’s party arrived that they began to stir, and overnight they became a screeching, flame-spouting terror.

     Not many are still alive to state what happened. In the confrontation, Edmont had been picked up into a wyvern’s maw. He very quickly lost consciousness. When he awoke, he was back in Ishgard, leg stitched together where a dragonling had bitten down.

    Albain’s body was unable to be recovered from where he had been thrown into the Sea of Clouds.

    Adapting to being the next head of house at barely twenty and recovering from a wound that altered his gait. While he was stubbornly against a walking aid to begin with, he finally gave in to the usage of one shortly after he wed the countess just shy of a decade later.

[nymfaia-archive]

the idea of emmanellain having to grieve his mother’s death almost on his own because artoirel was too good at being the strong son for edmont and edmont was lost in his own grief and guilt. feeling conflicted because he did love her, but he also saw how she treated haurchefant, and being in that rough place of grief being followed by relief, and relief followed by self-hate for being relieved.