#seriously keep out if you haven't finished shb

[starblood]

headcanon: survivor’s guilt

               if you ever ask xel what her biggest regrets are, you may be greeted with a moment of silence as she considers. after all, she has many, many regrets, ranging from the monetary to the emotional to the fact that she hasn’t seen her family in a fairly long time. she writes home every now and then, of course, but with how busy she has become, it has grown rarer and rarer. she still tries to send out a letter every week or so, tries, but seldom succeeds anymore. but that is not her biggest regret.

                 in truth, her biggest regret is being a survivor where so many of her friends have fallen in her journey. it began when the coup in ul’dah took place and she found herself fleeing for her life to ishgard. being unable to help her friends escape and not knowing if they were alive or not haunted her profoundly for quite some time. in ishgard, she found herself adopted as a ward of house fortemps, leaving her to travel the city and grow intermingled with the politics at hand. one can say it was ishgard that truly began xel’s understanding of politics, the moves by the great houses catching her attention and leaving her a keen student to try and comprehend what it was she was seeing there. while politics was not something she ever enjoyed, xel knew that to survive, she likely had to learn about such things. she had a capable friend in aymeric and haurchefant both to guide her in such subtleties and it was with their help, ysayle’s help, and estinien’s, that the secrets of the dragonsong war began to unravel for her. 

                 it was at the vault, however, where survivor’s guilt began to manifest for her. they went to stop thordan, make the attempt, and haurchefant took a blow meant for her. xel remembers well the grip she kept on his hand, the words he spoke ( “a smile better suits a hero.” ), and the loss of her friend all too keenly. she remembers how she smiled for him in his last moments. and she remembers how she wept later, only for her to push her tears away when she saw the grief from aymeric. the one thing about xel that she learned over her journey was that she could cry later. others need her more. but alas, that was not the last of it. knowing that aymeric was wounded also gave her regrets anew ( “if only i was faster, if only i was stronger, if only i was--” ) that still haunt her now.

                 months later came the fight upon the bridge as they pushed back against the griffin, months after she learned of moenbryda’s sacrifice to bring the matter of white auracite to her attention, another great loss took her. she had to save one friend at the cost of another’s life and xel was forced to watch as papalymo spent his life to save theirs -- and how he threw her onto the ship when she insisted on staying with him; she would have spent her life to help him. another friend had fallen and that drew a not-healed-over pain back to her. her tears did not fall so easily that time and so she threw herself into her work in those regions with fierce alacrity, only to find herself unexpectedly tangled with zenos. the sight of so many lost at rhalgr’s reach did not help. so she found herself facing him time and time again.

                 and he came to call her friend as well, friend -- and yet she witnessed that end in the menagerie. to see zenos cut himself down? it wrenched something in xel’s heart. it inspired an odd sort of grief. she was one of those whom protected his body against desecration before his burial and xel spent long hours simply studying his face, trying to understand why it would cause grief at all. but it was not for her to say. 

                 events continued onwards and then her friends began to collapse, one by one, out of the blue. the cause was unknown, the migraines caused by a voice reaching out to her, by a soul seeking out to touch her own, and xel felt absolutely helpless as she saw them all falling into that comatose state. it was the worst of timing for they were all prepared to face elidibus in his guise of zeno’s body and that set a certain sense of violation in place for her. had it not been for estinien, she would have perished. more of that guilt piled on when she wondered about her friends, wondering if they were aright, and then, at last -- she arrived in norvrandt by way of the exarch summoning her to that place. xel felt a new guilt in being there, yet she was for the time stuck -- and she found herself connecting with another whom she had not thought to see again.

                 the exarch implored for her aid in saving that world and, with no better option left to her, she agreed. she went in search of alisaie first and met tesleen, but that was but another stone upon the pile of guilt she carried when she saw what happened to her. but there was no time to grieve. they had too much to do. too much to focus on. another moment came when she thought y’shtola had perished once more, and even though there was talk of the Flow, it worried xel for what would that do to her friend? had it not been for emet-selch, they would never have found her again. and xel was grateful to him for that. 

                 and then ... there was emet-selch himself. solus. hades. the building of Light in xel left her crippled and ryne saved her, if only just, just enough to keep going. to keep functioning. she had talked with him several times, taking what knowledge he offered, even if she did not trust him at first. there wasn’t much there -- and after the events on mount gulg, xel had no idea of what to make of his behavior or the exarch’s. she nearly thrust her friends away from herself ( and she knew she was going to give urianger a terrific what for when the time came for it. ) out of anger and frustration and pain - for the Light contained within hurt more than she could say. how could something be so painful? but it was to emet-selch they went and it was the vision of amaurot they found and she found her heart breaking anew. 

                 at that final confrontation, she tried her best to protect her friends. she tried. the light threatened to overwhelm her and it was with ardbert’s help that she managed that final step. ( “if you could take one more step, to save both our worlds ... would you?” ) but it was what came after, in seeing that smile of acceptance and what she would almost have called peace upon hades’ face that broke her heart. her friends were alive, and she knew that she despised the ascians for what they had done -- but that did not stop her from the grief she felt for taking everything he had seen and held and felt for so long and ending it.

                   so it is that if you ever ask xel of her regrets, she is not likely to speak of those she has lost, those she could not save -- but there may be that look of a quiet grief in her eyes, a sadness to her smile, before she answers with something flippant. after all...

                   a smile better suits a hero.