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starcunning · 5 years

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Injurious

And the other thing that’s been cooking since last November (it was revised after more recent events). Sometimes you have to break a bone so it will heal correctly.

This story contains MSQ/ending spoilers for FFXIV patch 4.56, “Requiem for Heroes.”

Odette

At eleven bells I take up my cane and go for a walk with Grandpere. It is much too late for a morning promenade, but the intention is not to see and be seen; in my current state I do not much desire to be looked upon in any case. Much of the bruising has faded, but bandages betray the mending of more serious wounds. The one in my side pains me, but the chirurgeons have instructed me to walk as much as I am able.

It is spring; soon it will be Hatching-tide, but snow still dusts the roof of the Athenaeum, visible across the thoroughfare. We take the steps slowly; I have learned to place the cane down first and lean into it, compressing my favored side a little. It hurts each time I do it, but better that than a torn stitch. Again. How embarrassing for a lady who favors white to find herself blotted unexpectedly with crimson. Such a thing had not happened to me in nigh-on fifteen summers, when I was just in the earliest blooms of womanhood. Am I to be helpless as a child for the fullness of my convalescence? I am thirty-seven winters old—or thirty-two; there is some debate on the matter owing to the five years I cannot count after Carteneau.

There is no moon falling upon us now, and yet I still feel some great doom hanging overhead. Certainly there is someone trying to impress that knowledge upon me, and he—whoever he is—is responsible for my injured state. It is half a miracle I did not die; though Aymeric is too circumspect to say so, my sister does not share his compunctions.

Whatever calamity it is we are meant to forestall, there is no evidence of it along the Arc of the Venerable. Its august houses rest safe among the Pillars, dusted by snow. Eventually we come to a grander set of steps; the houses that rise to either side of the thoroughfare are slightly dingy—soot-dusted.

“Where are we going?” I ask, because I count dozens of stairs. “I’m reporting to the construction site,” Grandpere says. “I thought you might like to come, considering it’s your money.” I smile wanly, though it becomes more a grimace as I totter down the stairs. Before we’re halfway down, I am leaning on Grandpere’s arm. The stone is heat-cracked and crumbling despite the ever-present fog; old scaffolds are laid in broken heaps along the sides of the street. Children pick through the leavings of rotting wood, trying to find scraps small enough to carry away for the fire.

In the distance I can hear the steady pace of hammering, the rasp of saws, the back and forth call of workers. We pass terraces of row houses, and I peer down the streets, trying to make them familiar to me. There is one I should know; one I should be able to pick out from the rubble, but fire and desolation—and new construction—have made these facades unfamiliar to me. The impulse to stand before it is perverse anyway, and I smother it the way every breath seems to smother me, fog in my lungs. I can feel the damp on my cheeks; my makeup threatens to run.

Still, it isn’t all bad. I can see smoke rising from chimneys and the children do play, chasing each other round and round the middenheaps, laughing. Mother calls me a populist, and blames this on the education she was forced to give me—and my sister. While supplemented by private tutelage in the afternoons, most of what Colette and I learned was at the hands of beleaguered schoolmarms who—while well-accustomed to teaching the sons and daughters of merchants—were unprepared for the sudden influx of noble children. Grandpere—who even Mother would not dare accuse of the same heresies she pins on me, despite his stances being far more overt—tells me it was some manner of compromise; a gesture meant to show that the High Houses were not so far out of touch—or reach—from the common man.

I will never have children, but I suspect that my peers who are of an age with me will be faced with a similar edict.

I am less sure if the children we pass have been taught their letters. I wonder if Aymeric will raise the matter in the House. Perhaps that is putting the cart before the chocobo, if they are scavenging rotten wood to keep warm. Ishgard’s troubles are many; she still bears the scars of her thousand-year war, and it is difficult to know in what order to do things.

Perhaps then it is foolishness for me to rebuild the homes the so-called True Brothers set ablaze, but that is what I have the resources to do—I collect an allowance from my family and a stipend from the Temple Knights, to say nothing of the honoraria my sister and I are accustomed to collecting. There are those who claim we should work for free, but my belief is that no man should work for free, lest his employer compel others to match him. Instead, having no need of the money I collect, it is purposed toward other causes. And the House artisans are glad of steady work and steady wages. Grandpere collects a sum as foreman of the project; I suspect he, too, reinvests it in the project. His retirement as Count has left him with free time enough to pursue this endeavor, and I am glad of his expertise.

His office is small; I suspect that before he took possession of it the Forgotten Knight used it for storage. The windows are small and the scent of barley clings to the place. He does not linger overlong there; his desk is perfectly neat and his blotter has no waiting messages, so we wander through the work site. It is slow going; the stones are uneven and I must move carefully, unsure of my cane in such conditions. The masons wear the silver-and-red livery of our house, but there are other tradesmen who bear no such allegiance. They wear wool caps against the chill of this fog-cloaked bank, and I try to imagine Mother knitting beside the fire.

Fond as she is of the activity, I have not known her to do such a thing as this. She seems to prefer blankets and booties, to be given as gifts to the children of other ladies, since Colette and I insist upon disappointing her hopes.

Though the sun is nearing its apex, it has yet to burn the fog off this place. Despite that, morale seems high here. It is not impossible, I consider, that some of the men have roots here. After all, Rempart was of this place, once, before he came to our service. Even if not, they seem glad to have meaningful work—or perhaps it is simply that the prospect of it being undone by dragons in short order has greatly diminished. I am proud for a moment of what I have done, and allow myself to survey my work with a faint smile.

Then I spy a head of blonde hair and the bottom drops out of my world.

Rielle

The bucket is heavy and I know my arms will ache tomorrow, but I don’t complain. That’s a small price to pay for the work, and I’ve done harder things. I’m stronger than I know—Fray says so sometimes, but I’m not really sure I believe him. I know exactly how strong I am; I’m just not sure that’s all me.

I’ve been at this for moons, and my regular visitation allows me to watch the houses climbing back up out of the rubble. Home’s a funny word; I lived here a while, and somewhere else for the first few years of my life, but the place I’ve done most of my growing up is one I never want to go back to. This summer will be my fourteenth; I’m eager for it because it officially tips the scales and I’ll have spent more time out than in. Soon the oubliette will be a diminishing fraction of my life, though who knows what will grow to fill that space.

I hear a woman’s yelp and look down at my bucket of water and I want to help. I know a little conjury; Fray taught me some and I get books sent from Gridania. I used to have a—not a tutor, exactly, but someone used to teach me the arts of the astrologian, but that hasn’t happened for a while now. She disappeared along with her sister a few years ago. After the argument.

Anyway, rather than stand there frozen, I set my pail aside and hustle over. Master Tarresson is kneeling, leaning over someone I can’t see around a corner. He looks exasperated but amused; it’s a look I’ve seen Sid wear a thousand times. “What are you doing?” he asks, chuckling fondly. The unseen woman only hushes him in response, though perhaps it’s simply a hiss of pain. “She’ll hear you,” she says, and though her voice is raw there’s something familiar about it. “Who?” Master Tarresson asks, seeming amused. He outstretches an arm. “The girl? What have you to fear from a girl of fourteen summers?” Fourteen! I stand a little straighter, trying to look taller, older, as though this will make me fourteen summers in truth. I can feel myself smiling, my cheeks warm despite the cold. “That’s,” she says, gritting her teeth. I see her hand close around his forearm and hear another cry of pain escape through gritted teeth. “That’s Rielle de Caulignont.”

I know her then, as surely as she knows me, and I approach them closer still, looking upon them. Though it’s twisted with pain, I know that face. “Odette,” I say. She only lets out another wail, letting go of Master Tarresson’s arm and trying to press herself back against the stone wall, as though she might melt into it. “Are you alright?” I ask. “I think,” she says, panting, “I sprained my ankle.”

Trying to hide from me. I don’t understand, but I don’t ask, only kneel down next to her. She shrinks from my touch and I try to smile. “I want to help,” I say. “I’ve been studying …” Her face is pale, her lilac eyes fixed upon the sky, though I glance up and see nothing but fog. “Rielle,” she says, and something softens, though I can still see the tightness of pain in her brow. That’s still the same, then; Fray shows his in his shoulders and Sid in his jaw, and I’ve gotten so used to seeing it. She stretches her leg out, gritting her teeth. The ankle is swollen, bruises begun to flood beneath her pale skin like a spreading stain.

There are no Elementals here like the ones they write of in the Black Shroud. Nature seems remote to this place; there is the snow and the distant mountains, but Ishgard has stood for a dozen centuries, defiant and apart. Still, there is power in dragon’s blood, which has anointed every stone in this city, and which runs in my veins, and I call on that power, feeling it rise and awaken within me.

I haven’t just been studying; I’ve been practicing too. Ishgard is different now, but change doesn’t come all at once—it begins in one place and spreads unevenly, like a mottled bruise. My magic is the same; I can direct the streams of aether and speed the natural healing of the body, but changing the currents is harder. I let it pool in her leg, mending the tears in the ligaments. It wants to flow elsewhere, too; there are deep valleys of pain in her that threaten to empty me out, great spirit and all, but I stop before the torrent of aether can begin.

“You’re hurt,” I say, and for the first time I notice the cane that Master Tarresson holds. I’ve never known him to walk with one, and the head of it is fashioned after a swan preparing to take flight, so it must be hers. “’Tis nothing for you to worry on,” she insists. “I have a chirurgeon to tend me. But … thank you.” “So,” Master Tarresson says. “You’re that Rielle.” I feel the tips of my ears grow hot. “I didn’t realize I was so famous,” I say. “My granddaughter spoke of you all the time,” he says. “They both did.” I don’t know what to say to that for a long moment.

Into the pause he simply says “Up you go,” and takes Odette beneath her arms, pulling her with him as he rises to his feet, as though she were a child who had fallen playing in the courtyard. She takes her cane from him. “Is Miss Colette here, too?” I ask, pushing myself to my feet and dusting off my knees. The two of them exchange a look. “No,” Odette says after a moment. “She visits home occasionally, but we still have a job to do, and since I can’t …” “Oh,” I say. “I see.” “I’ll tell her how well you’re coming along,” Master Tarresson says, and I lift my shoulders, embarrassed. The bells of the city resound over the stone—twelve chimes, bright and clear like skies ought to be. “It’s quitting time for you, young miss,” Master Tarresson says. And lunch for the rest of them, I know; I can hear the hammering stop and the particular groaning of wood as the workers begin to climb down the scaffolds.

I look at Odette, who is looking back at me with a curious expression on her face. “Do you want to walk me home?” I say. Maybe she can stay for lunch. Maybe Fray can help her. He’s not a very experienced conjurer, but he still knows more than me. I know he was angry with her, but that was a long time ago, and she’s hurt. Maybe … She closes her eyes, and then she nods. “Alright,” she says, and offers me her hand.

It seems a childish gesture. I am almost thirteen summers old, and easily mistaken for older, but I have missed her, so I take it. Her hand is soft—she holds her sword in the same hand that now grasps her cane, leaving this one gentle.

Climbing the stairs is a very slow process, and I can tell how much it hurts her, though she never makes a sound.

“How did you get hurt?” I ask. “Saving the world,” she says, through gritted teeth. “As usual.” “Oh,” I say. Then, “Is that why you left?” “Yes,” she hisses. The wood groans too, but soon we are at the landing and can walk out into Saint Valeroyant’s Forum. The shattered statue of that saint still overlooks the plaza, and far overhead the dragonkillers still bristle, but they are unmanned. “How long are you home for?” I wonder. “Until I’m needed elsewhere. Until I get better.” She produces a lace-edged handkerchief from her sleeve and dabs at her brow, but the mask of pain has not quite left her. “So you have to go away again,” I say. She doesn’t take my hand again, just leans on her cane and starts off. “Eventually.” “Well, as long as you’re in the city, maybe we can see each other,” I say, smiling at the thought. “What were you doing in the Brume anyway?” She turns her head to look at me. “It’s my worksite,” she says, as though it should be perfectly obvious. “What?” “I’m paying for it, so I thought I would go see how it’s coming along. Moreover, the chirurgeons suggested it was good for me to get out of the house a bit.” “Oh,” I say. I hadn’t realized—the Dzemael livery was obvious enough, but I had assumed they were merely contracted for the work by the state. “Why?” Her gaze goes distant, her knuckles on the cane growing white. “I guess the house I bought you isn’t good enough for Fray,” she says. “What?” I’m bewildered. It’s a nice house, and I’m happy there, and that, at least, seems to make Fray and Sid happy. “I’m rebuilding the old one,” Odette says. “And the rest of them. Maybe then he’ll be satisfied.”

That doesn’t seem right. And she doesn’t sound happy when she talks about Fray. I want to ask her, but that seems too obvious, so I say something else instead.

“Did you miss me?” I ask, and the words come out quieter than I meant them to. No one would mistake me for a young lady of fourteen summers hearing that; more likely they would assume I was eight, and I hate it. She looks at me a long moment before she answers. “Of course I did, Rielle,” she says.

When we come to the house, Fray is standing outside, his arms folded across his chest. He doesn’t look happy either, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake, but these two loved each other once, and I don’t understand why that should have stopped. His eyes are like a wolf’s eyes.

“Rielle,” he says. “I found Odette at the worksite,” I say quickly. “I thought we could have lunch, and—” “Go inside,” Fray tells me in a tone that brooks no disagreement.

Fray

I cannot believe she’s here. That she would dare to come here. I haven’t seen her in two years, but Halone help me, I could have gone for twenty more without having to see her face. She’s never completely absent my life, of course—that’s just how it is, given who she is, but she doesn’t come down here, and she shouldn’t, and she has.

I hear the door close behind me, and glance back to see the curtains twitch, so I jerk my head to the side and make my voice as calm as I can. “Let’s take a walk.” She doesn’t say anything, but she follows me. She’s leaning on a cane—for what? Sympathy? I wonder why she needs it and then remember she’s always had her crutches, and am angry all over again because I used to be one. At the end of the street there’s a little garden, a communal patch of green that overlooks the plaza below, though the fog rolling over the lower reaches of the city obscures much. I was born down there. I belong down there.

Instead I’m up here, with her, and she’s looking at me, brow furrowed like she can’t figure me out. “What in the hells do you think you’re doing?” I ask, my voice low and soft. We are well out of earshot of the house but somehow I still think we’ll be overheard. “Rielle asked me to walk her home!” Odette protests. There’s something almost whining in her tone. “And you said yes,” I point out to her. “Rielle is a child. You’re an adult. You’re supposed to be the responsible one. Or did it not occur to you that you wouldn’t be welcome?” “I didn’t know you were going to be home!” I shake my head. “Whether I was here to see it or not, you shouldn’t have come. I don’t even know why you’d want to.” “I didn’t want to disappoint her,” Odette says. There’s something about her voice when we argue; she gets shrill and girlish. Right now it annoys me, because there’s no point in granting her my sympathy. “Didn’t want to disappoint her,” I repeat, the words blustering out of me, scornful. “You disappeared! For two years!” “You don’t even want me here, so I don’t exactly see what the problem is,” Odette says. Her hand tightens on the cane.

“We’re not talking about me right now,” I say, setting my teeth. “We’re talking about Rielle, and how you never said goodbye to her or wrote to her while you were gone. You don’t think that’s disappointing?” “Would you have even let me write to her?” she asks. Her lips are set into a firm line. The fog is dewy on her brow. “I sure as hells won’t now,” I say. “She needs stability, and she has it now, no thanks to you.” She huffs out a sigh. “You have no idea the pressures I’m under,” she says.

It’s true; I don’t. I know she’s a Warrior of Light—along with her twin. Sometimes they count her manservant and companion, a fellow bastard of the Brume she probably thinks of as a charity case, but Rempart is much less famous than the twins, and I suspect that’s not entirely an accident. I can only guess at the circumstances they and their companions find themselves in.

“If you’re going to start telling me about that now, it’s far too late,” I tell her. There was a time where that was all I wanted, but for all the times she talked about herself, Odette never spoke much about those things in particular. “Why don’t you go tell the Lord Commander?” I sneer. She averts her gaze, her brow furrowing. “Perhaps I have,” she replies, tone bitter.

I grind my teeth. It’s a surprise only insofar as I assumed she had discarded him too, but that admission is a confession that she chose him over me, and she turns her head to look at me. There’s something like pain in her expression for a moment before it transmutes to anger. Disgust. “Oh, don’t look like that,” she says. “You still have Sidurgu, don’t you?” “I never endeavored to keep Sid a secret,” I snipe back. “I believe, in fact, you had firsthand knowledge of that relationship.” “So what?” she replies. “In the end you’d choose him over me anyway. Just like you’re going to blame this on me even though Rielle was part of it too.” “Rielle and I are going to have a discussion,” I say, “and I will make it clear to her that I don’t want you to come here and I don’t think that you’re going to be a positive influence in her life, and if she does it again, yes, there will be consequences. It’s my fault for assuming she knew better.” She looks at me, bewildered, as though the concept of boundaries is completely foreign to her. Maybe it is, reflecting on our time together. “But I didn’t do anything,” she says. “You abandoned her,” I snarl, no longer able to keep the anger from my voice. “You don’t think she’s had enough of that after her mother?” “What do you know about mothers!” Odette shouts back. “That’s exactly why I should talk to her!” “Your mother is still alive, last I checked. I don’t think it would pass unnoticed, exactly.” She has no answer for that, so she only huffs, tapping her cane against the stone to give vent to whatever roils inside her.

“You can’t be that mad at me if you still live in my house,” she says. “It’s not your house,” I point out. “You made that very clear when I asked you to move into it!” “If you hate me so much I don’t know why you’d stay there,” she says. “Because Rielle needs a stable environment,” I say, frustration radiating down my spine. “So you’re not going to move back into Ser Ompagne’s house once it’s rebuilt?” “Once you finish paying for the reconstruction, you mean,” I say. I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. “Why do you even care so much?” “Because!” she shouts back. “You were right! I can’t buy everyone a house that lost theirs, there just aren’t enough of them, and it seemed like this is what you wanted! To just—just go back to the life you had before you met me! Like I didn’t even matter, but if I could do that, then …” She turns away, blinking. “Oh, save your crocodile tears,” I spit. “What do you want me to do, fall at your feet in worship? You made it pretty clear when you left how you felt about us. Like it wasn’t already obvious.” She hunches her shoulders but doesn’t turn back, mumbling something I can’t quite hear. “Why did you even buy us this house in the first place, Odette?” I ask, stalking up to her shoulder so I can look at her face while she doesn’t answer me.

But she does, to my great surprise. “I wanted to do something important. I thought you’d be grateful.” “What,” I say, “grateful enough to forgive you for stringing me along? For fucking around behind my back?” “You knew who I was,” she says, her tone a lot less fragile than it was a moment before. “What I was like. Did you just assume I’d change for you?” “I don’t understand you at all,” I admit. “I thought you bought the house because you wanted me to forgive you for those sins you hadn’t confessed to yet. But you don’t care about that at all, do you?” “I didn’t,” she says. “They’re two separate things,” I say. “Thank you, I guess, for saving my life and making sure my family didn’t become homeless. Is that what you wanted to hear?” “Yes,” she replies, but it’s robotic, like she’s somewhere far away from here. “But you hurt me, Odette. Did you think you didn’t?” “No,” she says, just as flat. “No, I knew.” “I don’t have to forgive you for that,” I say.

She blinks again, turning her face away from me, and some smothered part of me that cared for her once—that loved her, even—cries out that perhaps her tears are real, and wants me to do something about them. But that isn’t my problem anymore. It can’t be. She made that clear, and anyway she has the Lord Commander to salve whatever wounds she’s nursing.

“Is there anything else you want to say to me?” she asks. “Before we say goodbye for good and you just go back to your life like—” “Like you don’t matter,” I finish for her. “Do you think I’m obligated to let you matter now?” I ask, and she’s still, silent, the breath rattling in her lungs. “I can’t say I’m happy to see you in pain, Odette, but if you want to talk about people mattering, when did we ever matter to you? When did I ever matter to you?” I ask. “I let myself believe that you were committed, because I admired your convictions in other things, but you were never anything less than halfway out the door all the time. I just didn’t let myself see it because you were a fucking hero—you saved my life and then Rielle’s, of course I felt something for you, but you were never going to let yourself be part of this. Not really. And when I did notice, you didn’t seem to care that I had. So who doesn’t matter, Odette?” “I never meant to hurt you,” she says, but her voice is weak. “Bullshit,” I say. “You did too. That was your way out.” “Maybe,” she says.

That’s about as much closure as I can expect to get, so I turn to go and leave her there. “Tell Rielle I said goodbye,” she says, her voice reedy and choked. I don’t dare turn back to look at her, because there’s nothing I want to see back there. “Fine,” I say. “But I’m not doing it for you.”

#ff14 #fanservice friday #FAN DISSERVICE FRIDAY #odette #fray myste #rielle de caulignont #ff14 spoilers #stormblood spoilers #patch 4.56 spoilers #original content #starcunning writes

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