i was prompted and i’ve been conceptualizing this a ton anyway so while i’m not entirely sure how it HAPPENS yet this is. one way it could, i suppose, but i’ve worked out how to do it without Miraculously Curing Him Of Everything™ so the hard part’s out of the way
anyway this boy deserves a happy turn in his health so here i’ll make something like this canon somehow sooner or later
"The Light is with you," Ailit says.
And not only does she say it, but Raein trusts that she senses it. Two of her fingertips on his forehead, the faintest contact, yet her power burns like a sun within and around her, warming him just by standing in her proximity. As few times as he's been so close to the Lightforged, he understands this is innate in all of them. Light incarnate; like mortal naaru.
He feels filthy by comparison, ravaged by necrotic and demonic energies; how many similar things has she seen? How many of them pulled to the darkness, twisted into monsters that would come back out to threaten her friends and her causes? The fact she hasn't cut him down is a little unbelievable, and yet she reminds him of M'uru. Maybe that's why he feels that twinge of shame under her hand, like every sin is bared to her; like M'uru themself could whisper his transgressions to her even in their demise.
Instead, she tells him that, and he feels that safety the Light brings him. He feels it in her touch, in the glow that radiates around her; she is the Light, she is naaru-chosen, and she speaks on their behalf. He believes her.
"It has protected you through the most horrific things," she says, not sadly, but proudly. Astonished and fond. Does she feel it when his mind fills with doubt? When he thinks of Ashstrider, his leg, of all the times he cried for the Light and it didn't come? "It found you through others' hands... It brought your steed to you..."
And he'd never thought about it like that.
"It protects you even now." Her fingers draw back, and he gasps at the faint chill that hits his face when her radiance no longer warms his face. But her hand moves over his left shoulder, and the warmth returns anew there, as her fingers glide down to his elbow and ultimately his wrist. She holds the back of his hand within her own. "It mends your leg and your mana. I feel it there, trying; so much of your potential is burned away on just these ailments."
"Can you take it away?" he asks, but the question frightens him.
Ailit gently shakes her head. "I cannot. If these things were truly curable with the Light, then you'd have achieved it yourself long ago. My ancestral home would not still be the shadow of its former self. The Legion's power is corrosive, and what it destroys cannot be completely restored."
Raein nods. He understands. Ailit rests her other hand over the one of Raein's she holds. Her head tilts, thinking. Her hands begin to glow, this impossibly clear power, brighter and whiter and golder than Raein has ever seen.
"Maybe," she says, thinks more, and her brow relaxes. "Yes. I think I can relieve you of the burden, for just a moment. I think..."
Her hands glow brighter, and Raein feels her power pouring into him—softly, slowly, like how the pond water in Eversong used to run across his feet. He hasn't felt the Light in his left arm in over a year; it's been stonewalled time and time again by the severity of his weakness, the destroyed pathways through him that his mana can no longer travel. But Ailit fills those dried up leylines so effortlessly. It travels further, flooding his chest, cascading through his torso and into his legs—for one moment, and only one moment, the pain in his leg is gone. Not lessened, not numbed, but truly absent.
It's even terrifying. It feels good but it's wrong, then the ache is back again—weaker, as it always is after the Light's touched it, but there. And his arm... his heart, his face—
The moment her hands draw back, Raein's go to his chest, one hand clasped to his left arm, then his cheeks. His heart beats easier, his arm feels lighter, and his face—
"You cannot restore what was destroyed," Ailit says, so kindly. Gently, she takes his hands again, simply to hold them, and hers are... colder—no. His are warmer. "But you can forge anew."
There's new passage in his arm, new life to his erratic heart. And his face...
His eyes focus on her gauntlet, and the reflection is muddled by the curve and details in the steel, but he sees the difference immediately. Both his eyes void of any blue, but they're not greener; the right, unharmed since his days in Tempest Keep, glows a clear gold, and the left, more freshly scarred and still a long way from healing, no longer ebbs toward the arcanic blue he'd had as a little boy, but the gold like its sibling.
He looks back up at Ailit, to ask, but somehow he already knows. The answer is in his own body, as the Light burns clearer and closer in his blood. It's not new, it's not hers, it's his and it's always been his. But she's broken away some of the darkness that has dimmed its presence for so long.
"Why?" He didn't do anything. He doesn't—
"We who walk in the Light are not ruled by deservedness. We give. Sight, warmth, and the opportunity to try again." She lets go of his hands and steps back, and this time, he doesn't feel the chill of her absence. "Show me your Light."
It's not effortless—after everything he's been through, Ailit is right, it will never be effortless again—but it's easier. The Light answers him, in both his hands, burning gold and white; he feels it flood his chest and his eyes, and it feels different as it flows through his body different. It's not what he remembers, but Ailit is right; it never will be again.
It comes and goes as he asks it to. Easy, loyal and kind. A rekindled camaraderie. It seems to be a theme in Raein's life. He laughs; the Light glows brighter in his hands and his heart.
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