#alangan

Gantsetseg is used to dealing with Alan’s bad dreams. Comes with having been a soldier, apparently, even if the soldiering was under Garlemald. Or maybe especially if the soldiering was under Garlemald. He’d been awkward about it, the first night he spent in her yurt. Worried he’d wake her and she wouldn’t get the sleep she needs. Since at the time she’d been recovering from Elidibus-in-a-Zenos-suit breaking three ribs, an arm, and her left horn, and was therefore on heroic quantities of pain medication, she’d correctly told him he was being an idiot. She’d put tiger bones and yol feathers above the bed, herbs in the pillow for sweeter dreams. She’d held him tight, his face buried in her chest, because her horns made doing it the other way around pretty much impossible. It helped.

It keeps helping when they go to Werlyt, Bozja, Paglth’an. When the drums of war pound through their souls, and he wakes sweating and shaking. When she can be there and offer her heart, clumsy as she is with it.

And then they go to Garlemald, and suddenly he isn’t alone in his night terrors.

It starts with the weather. The airship flight takes a full day in fierce winds, turbulence threatening to send them to their deaths in the icy mountains below. While she’s awake, huddling in the hold, she’s fine. It’s only once night falls and her dreams bring her a different flight—one where she was manacled next to her tribesmen in a black steel beast, her captors speaking their strange harsh language all around her, and the entire ship had swayed like this just before the winds had brought it down—that the fear rises with manzasiri claws and drags her screaming out of her bunk, clawing at her blankets and the walls and, unfortunately, Alan’s face.

“Oh, fuck, honey,” she says.

Alan Venditor, the man she loves, attempts a smile. In the low light he’s turned on so he can see her better, his third eye gleams like a pearl. “You’ve given me worse on purpose. I’m more worried about you. Nightmare?”

Well, it’s not like she can deny it. “’S th’ wind,” she mutters. “Screaming.”

He swallows. She’s told him the story; knowing him, he probably still feels guilty. He wasn’t one of those ironmen, but to him it doesn’t matter. He was an officer of the Empire, ambitious and heartless as any of his fellows, and that’s not as easy to shed as his black armor. But that man, that decurion, is not the same man sitting on the bunk next to her and taking her hand in his. His voice is so soft as he asks, “...Do you think you can fall back asleep?”

Oh, she hates being vulnerable. She’s Bayaqud. It’s her duty as a woman to be strong. But if she can’t lean on him she can’t lean on anyone, so she mutters, “If you hold me?” and he does, even when the side of her horn jabs him in the collarbone.

So. Garlemald’s shite.

It gets worse. Because of course it gets worse, because there’s bloody fucking Zenos and that godsdamned Ascian and a day where her body isn’t her own, a day where people die at her hands while she’s malms away trapped in a dying soldier’s corpse. She’s going to tear Zenos apart and make his ribcage into a fucking xylophone.

She doesn’t wake screaming after that. She wakes shaking, fangs rattling, curled into a ball so tightly that her tail spikes are digging into her own neck. Her mind is full of blood and bone-deep chill and Alan saying worriedly, “Gan? Gan, wake up—”

She bursts immediately into tears.

Alan is there. He doesn’t leave. He kisses her forehead and tells her she’s here, she’s alive, she’s going to be alright. He makes her hot butter tea the way she likes it, even though he hates the stuff. His voice stays gentle and soft even as his hands tremble with rage. “So,” he says, when they’re tucked up together under the furs with their respective tea mugs (his has whiskey in it), “how many pieces of Zenos does your khatun want you to bring back? Because I want a fucking trophy too.”

I’m marryin’ you, she doesn’t say. For one thing, it’s the middle of the night and they’re both exhausted. For another, she doesn’t know what Garlean betrothals are like, has never met his family, and only has one horse for a groom-price. But gods, he thinks his joy in battle is something to hide? Something that makes him a threat? She’s going to take him to meet her tribe. She’s going to see him in a red silk deel, his face painted with the tiger stripes of Bayaqud men. She’s going to have both her fathers teach him awful jokes.

But she can’t do any of that yet, so she shrugs and says, “Pretty sure she just wants a skull. Ribcage xylophone?”

He doesn’t have her fangs, but his smile is knife-sharp anyway. “Ribcage xylophone.”

Oh, she has to kiss him. Her horns bracket both their faces, the arm he has around her waist tightens to pull her practically into his lap with a leg slung over his hips, and she’s not sure which of them growls when her claws catch the back of his neck. The snow, the Ascians, Zenos—what do they matter now? She’s got him. She can face hell.

Years spent buried in dirt and snow had not been kind to Alanais pyr Venditor’s gunblade. She’d honestly been impressed Al even remembered where he’d left it. But now he’d dug it up, determined to use it again—to protect people, he said, instead of conquering them. He’d met her eyes, and her heart had pounded like a drum because she knew he meant to protect you.

Because he loved her. Gods, she still couldn’t believe it. If she didn’t hate that Ascian-in-a-Zenos-suit so much, she might’ve thanked him; she and Alan might have circled each other’s orbit for years otherwise. But instead she’d woken up in the infirmary with Alan’s hand in hers, and after he’d told her he loved her he’d said he was going to fight with her, and then he’d gone to Coerthas.

And now they had his old gunblade.

His old gunblade, which was...

She poked at the grip. Her finger went through the wood. The firing mechanism was a solid block of rust she wasn’t even going to touch without gloves. But parts of the stock—the brass inlay, especially—were probably salvageable, and the blade might only need cleaning and sharpening if they were lucky. Grimacing, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

It’d be easier if she had help, probably. Alan had offered, but no matter how much her heart had melted at the words she’d had to decline. This would be a gift for him; he shouldn’t be the one sweating over it.

The Garland Ironworks had granted her the exclusive use of a workshop ages ago, after she’d come back from the Crystal Tower with armloads of Allagan spoils and no place to experiment on them. She’d used them to retrofit her reaper and create the first of many magitek horses for places where her reaper just wouldn’t fit. Most of the space, however, was taken up by smaller gil-making projects—windup toys, handheld weaponry, chronometers and orchestrions. She’d had to sweep a good number of them off the table to make room for the two-handed gunblade and all the fiddly little parts she’d need to create a new mechanism. A better mechanism. Something worthy of him.

She tapped her tail thoughtfully on the metal floor, thinking. She couldn’t use anything that relied on aether generation; he was Garlean. It’d have to be pure magitek. Fortunately, the Allagans had been excellent at that.

The mechanism from her old Allagan-style manatrigger would probably fit. In fact...she hefted it, imagining Alan’s hands on the grip instead. He had larger hands than her, so she’d have to enlarge the trigger guard, but that was easy enough. And she could easily rifle out a new, longer barrel to lay along the three-fulm blade she’d salvaged. The stock would have to be new, though. Something smooth, maybe varnished wood, to match the blade.

I should call Portia. Portia was a woman of many talents; she’d be able to craft a suitable stock, or know someone who could. Gan dropped the manatrigger and lunged for a sheet of paper, furiously sketching the rough shape of the old gunblade stock and adding quick design drafts—flying yols, a canis pugnax worked into the butt, a handguard that suggested wings. She’d tighten it up later; it would have to be perfect.

She’d make it perfect.

For Alan, she’d make it perfect.

Over the next few weeks, the stock took shape under Portia’s hands—she’d grinned and offered a steep discount once Gan had told her who it was for. Meanwhile, Gan spent long nights bent over her workbench, enlarging the firing chamber and replacing crystals to account for the difference between lightning-aspected bullets and charged gunpowder-filled cartridges. The barrel was easier; sure, the rifling had to be precise down to a hair’s breadth, but she was used to that. By the time Portia delivered the completed stock and engraved ricasso cover to her, she was ready to assemble it.

By itself, the gun fired beautifully. She put three bulls’-eyes into a target the width of her palm at fifty yalms. She only had to attach the blade, which she’d sharpened and oiled until it looked almost new. As she lined up the screws, though, something stopped her.

Most warriors named their greatest weapons, and Garleans tended to go for...dramatic ones. She’d seen Livia’s Aglaia and Tiber’s Gaudeo. Alan’s gunblade shouldn’t go nameless and unknown into the world. But what to name it...?

She didn’t know a lot of Garlean, and most of what she knew was technical bullshite or elaborate profanity. But she could poke some of the Ironworkers until they told her what they called their loved ones, purely hypothetically, you understand, until they coughed up something that matched how she felt for Alan.

cw: skin picking, mild self-harm

The Orben took their scales—small, flexible, dark as midnight—and wove them into the reeds of their boats, creating something that could stand up to any river current. Gan had never seen an Orben boat, but she’d heard they were a sight to behold.

They probably don’t have too many cases of stonescale then, she thought irritably, and scratched at the shedding patch on her neck again. Molting started from the head downward, and she’d already sloughed the outermost layer of dead scales on her face to reveal glossy new color beneath. The face was always the easiest. The rest...well, that was itchy and annoying even for an unafflicted woman, and with stonescale making her scales thick and tough it seemed to last forever. Like one of the Eorzean hells, if there was a Hell of Loose Scales.

It was coming off. She could get a claw under it now. If she pulled...

She tugged experimentally. Lightly. She’d heard and seen horror stories of what happened when you rushed.

Nothing. She flicked her gaze back to the machinery in front of her, a disassembled mammet she was rebuilding into something that could carry small ordnance. It should have been an easy job; she’d done much more complicated recycling jobs before, even on Allagan tech which was always a bloody nightmare to even understand. At least the Garleans believed in labels and color-coding. But tonight she couldn’t focus, and she knew why.

She hissed through her teeth, annoyed at herself instead of her body. They’ll come off. They always do. Even my mother’s scales shed eventually. Slowly, yes, and only after a half-day’s soak in a hot tub, but they did shed. Gan tried not to think about the scars on her mother’s joints where the stonescale had been cauterized, bands where even scar tissue was still more flexible than the armored scales it replaced. Her mother had seen over forty winters. Surely she, Gan, had some time before it got that bad. Surely the oils and unguents here, far better than butter or sheep fat, would slow the spread.

Old men half-entombed in their own skin. Women whose spine-tipped tails could no longer bend to counterbalance their stride. Others whose scales grew so heavy upon their backs they could not ride without pain. And that was if—if—she lived to grow old at all.

Her nails dug hard into the back of her own neck; she’d been scratching lightly all this time, barely registering the action, but now it seemed she couldn’t hold back any longer. With a sharp, electric flash of pain, two scales came loose at once and bounced to the pillows beneath her. At least, she hoped that was where they landed. Sometimes they ricocheted off into the corners of the yurt for Alan to step on.

She set her fingers to her neck again, feeling the wetness there. The fresh scales were still a little new at their edges. Alan.

Gangos wasn’t a bad place to set up her yurt. True, the sand had made finding her footing a bit precarious—and it got everywhere, so she had to sweep daily—but it wasn’t too much worse than Thanalan, and infinitely better than the Burn. At least the air had life to it, and the constant bustle of people heading to and fro through the encampment was lively rather than flat and irritated. And there were absolutely no giant sand worms. She’d definitely slept in worse conditions.

She couldn’t sleep now.

True, it was relatively quiet. True, the air was cool. True, the opening at the center of her roof showed endless stars. But her bed was empty, and so she couldn’t rest. She tossed and turned, flopped in the center like a starfish, curled all four limbs and her tail around her largest pillow. It didn’t help. Nothing was helping. She’d left West Wind in Revenant’s Toll and Ehyai in Rhalgr’s Reach, so she couldn’t even pet them until the star maidens sent her dreams.

She sat up, propped her elbows on her knees, and swept her gaze around her yurt. It was a large dwelling—Bayaqud yurts had to be, even those meant for women who hadn’t taken husbands yet—but normally it felt small. Cozy. Comfortable. Normally there were Alan’s clothes spilling out of a chest there, and his gunblade resting against the wall there next to her piece of Ixion’s horn, and the faint hum of magitek was accompanied by his soft breathing next to her. She would wake up to him starting breakfast if he felt industrious, or to lazy caresses on slower mornings. But he was on the other side of the world, helping to take down whatever the Empire was throwing at them on that front, and so she was alone.

Nhaama’s tits, she missed him.

Her linkpearl lay on a chest next to her bed. It wouldn’t be too late in Gyr Abania, would it? She could call him, listen to his voice, tell him…

I love you.

I pray to the gods every night for you.

I can’t sleep without you next to me.

She blew out a harsh breath and flopped down amidst her sheets, slapping her tail roughly against the bedframe. No. He’s a busy man. And I’m stronger than that. I can wait until morning, and a sensible hour.

Her yurt was empty. Her bed was empty. She kicked her pillow to the floor, rolled over on her stomach, and buried her head in the soft one on Alan’s side of the bed. It still smelled like him.

Only answering for the ones with active ships or we’d be here all night, so:

Gantsetseg: Insists she does not get jealous. Is a liar, because anyone flirting with Alan would not only confuse the hell out of him but get her attempting to loom in the background until they leave. (She’s 5′7″. The looming isn’t necessarily very effective.) The Garlic Is Amazing But He Is Hers, Dammit, You Will Not Steal.

…In her defense, “you stole it you bought it” is a recognizable means of marriage on the Steppes. Bayaqud marriages may or may not involve a highly ceremonial form of doing exactly that.

Evrard: Is jealous and will admit to it, because look at Busari. Feast your eyes upon all seven fulms of lizard lancer. Ev just isn’t that much of a catch in comparison, and he’s a little insecure about it–especially if there are other Xaela around. Who would pick Skinny Elezen Dude over scales, fangs, and the ability to yeet a full-grown Roegadyn? (Bu would, Ev. Bu would.)

Ritanelle: Doesn’t get jealous! With the highly open relationship she has with Emmanellain, it would be horribly hypocritical of her–and besides, they’re just friends. Right? Right. No deeper feelings here, no sir. She certainly is not pining while she’s stuck on the First.

Gantsetseg sprinted off the bridge, flung herself face-first into the pond a fulm below her, and screamed into the water. The rest of Rhalgr’s Reach was probably staring at her, but she didn’t care. It couldn’t get worse. Cold water, that was the ticket. Cold water and time.

When she surfaced, M’naago was staring at her with a raised eyebrow and a question-marked tail. “You okay there?”

Oh. Cold water wasn’t helping. Gan wiped at her eyes, hopelessly smearing her face paint, and warred within herself. M’naago was a captain of the Ala Mhigan Resistance. If anyone hated Garleans, it was her—and she should, after all they’d done to her nation and her people. She’d judge Gan worse than Q’yala did. No, Gan shouldn’t tell her. If she had to confess, it should be to someone...well. It should be Rita, frankly. Rita had no room to talk and would probably give tips.

“The Garlean is hot.”

Oops.

M’naago swished her tail behind her, confusion slowly deepening to incredulity on her face. “We’ve met Portia, aye.”

“No!” Really, she should stop talking. Portia Brewster was no fighter, but a blacksmith in good standing with much-admired shoulders and a dazzling smile—an entirely respectable choice to be attracted to, regardless of how many eyes she had. She and M’naago could bond over Portia Brewster. “It ain’t—look, the workshop gets hot and Al rolled his sleeves up and—“

M’naago held up a hand to stop her, crouching on the bridge to peer into her face. “Al. This is...”

Gan sank below the water’s surface again, ignoring M’naago’s exclamation of Alan the mechanic?! If she held her breath long enough, maybe the miqo’te would go away. If she sank to the bottom of the lake, maybe the chill would leach out visions of Alan’s hands in leather gloves, his pale arms with scattered scars gleaming in the light. Her mind would be still and peaceful. No fevered thoughts of Alan’s eyes intent and focused as a hawk’s, of her unbuttoning his shirt the rest of the way to trace the lean muscles she knew couldn’t be just in her head, of the way the fabric of his work trousers stretched and he wasn’t big but that was fine by her, they’d fit together—

Her lungs burned. She broke the surface, gasping for air. M’naago was still watching her.

“You’ve got bloody awful taste.”

Oh, now those were fighting words. Before Gan could think better of it, she brought her arm around in an arc, splashing M’naago with a sheet of frigid pond water. As the miqo’te launched herself at her in response, she found herself grinning. This was what a warrior of the Bayaqud was meant to do, not moon uselessly over former Imperials.

Granted, the warriors of her tribe usually meant actual combat, but a splash war took her mind off her troubles just fine.

The Reunion way of making kumiss was with dzo milk, in great wooden vats. With such a mild kick to it, you had to drink a lot in order to get properly drunk—and it was so rich that reaching that state took entirely too much fortitude. The traditional way was better.

“...I’m going to regret asking this, but why are there leather bags hanging from the ceiling?”

Gan reached up and punched one, making the contents slosh as she turned to grin at her boyfriend. “I’m making kumiss!”

Alan did not look impressed at her brewing skills and resourcefulness. Alan, in fact, looked more confused than anything else. “And…?”

Oh, right. Of course Alan had no idea what went into proper kumiss. Garleans drank—actually, she wasn’t entirely sure what Garleans drank. She’d heard something about vodka, but according to the Gallius siblings the traditional Garlean drink was “everything.” Everything except kumiss. “It’s horse milk! You put it in bags and shake it a little until it turns into booze. Usually you’d sling it over your saddle but West Wind had enough exercise today—and do you know how much horse milk costs here? If the bag breaks and it spills I will cry.”

He blinked slowly at her. “Uh. A lot?” She saw the exact moment the rest of her words caught up to him, because his whole face twisted. “I’m sorry, did you say…?”

Everyone acts like they’ve never heard of fermented dairy right up until I ask them if they have cheese here. Is it the horse thing? I think it’s the horse thing. She flopped down next to him on the rug, the better to teasingly flip the end of her tail across his thigh. “Your people make booze from turnips, Al. Turnips. At least milk is already a liquid.”

“But…”

He was blushing, which was adorable and absolutely deserved a kiss. She flashed him a grin when she reclaimed use of her mouth. “Wait until it’s ready. At least try it? For me?”

Azim’s dick, he turned red all the way to his (cute, squishy) ears. It was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. “Uh. Um. Okay.”

There were probably a few places that were darker than the inside of a yurt with lights out, but Gantsetseg was reasonably sure she couldn’t think of any. If I could, she thought grumpily, I’d move there.

She couldn’t sleep. It was dark and quiet and her bedroll was comfortable, but she couldn’t sleep. Even with the blankets kicked off and the soft felt tent covers rolled half a fulm off the ground, her thinnest shirt and most abbreviated shorts were just barely on the comfortable side of too hot; not for the first time, she found herself pondering what Alan’s reaction would be if she just slept naked. She had a feeling he’d faint. Even now, after three months together, she caught him staring at her at the oddest times with an expression she could only call awe.

She’d asked him about it once. He’d whispered, I can’t believe you’re real.

It had struck her to the core, so of course she’d laughed it off. She found herself regretting that now, as she rolled over to stare at the slightly paler patch in the darkness that was his sleeping form. They were only a few ilms apart, but it felt like malms; she wasn’t sure if it had been bells or centuries ago that they’d kissed goodnight and pulled the covers up around each other. Her hand hovered in the space between them, one finger stretching out to trace the curve of his spine, but she let it fall. If only it wasn’t too godsdamned hot to touch. If only they were somewhere cooler—the beach, maybe, she doubted Alan had ever been to Costa del Sol and with the madness surrounding them they deserved a place with cool breezes where she could wrap herself around him or curl up in his arms and…

Ugh. It was even too hot to think about that. But as she reserved those thoughts for later and her eyes readjusted to the dark, she found her gaze exploring him: the muscles of his back, the fall of his loose hair—it was getting longer, and she had to fight the urge to bury her hands in it every time they kissed—the line of his neck, soft and unprotected where an auri man would have tough scales. Most of his scars were on his front, but there was one, thin and sharp, that had looped around to his shoulder. An auri man would have scales there, too. Alanais pyr Venditor had had nothing but cermet to protect him from her arrow.

She laid on her side, watching him sleep. She couldn’t picture him with scales. Nor horns, nor a tail; her cousin Hoelun might say that those made up a proper partner, but she couldn’t agree. Not anymore. Soft skin. Soft ears. Tiny little teeth and no magic and...and a heart of gold. Mum, Da, Papa, I wish you could see. He’s not who you would have approved of, but he loves me and vows to protect me and I…

Alan Vesper was defenseless in slumber next to her and she couldn’t not touch him, even with the summer heat. She slid her tail out of the edge of the blankets, curving it around to drape loosely over his hips. He shifted and for a moment she froze, afraid she’d wake him—gods, he needed sleep—but he only let out a sigh and settled back down. There was the faintest grumble. It might, she thought, have been her name.

I love him. She breathed out slowly, felt the certainty of it pulse through her heart. I love him, and if I wasn’t so afraid I’d scare him away I’d spend every minute showing him how much. Nhaama, are you listening? Keep this man safe. Even if I should fall, keep him safe.