How many days, how many nights... weeks, months, years had he waited for her?
When G’raha had made the decision to seal himself away in the Tower, it had been with the comfort of knowing that this would help Violette. She wouldn’t be forced to deal with the decision of what should be done with the technology, and the monsters, inside of it, and its knowledge would not be lost to the ages. He would finally... be useful. His cursed eye would finally allowing him to serve a purpose. Not one as grand as a Hero’s but one that was befitting him.
A helper. An aide in the Hero’s quest.
When he had been awakened a scant few hundred years later to the Ironworks and had learned of her death, he hadn’t been sad. Not... at first. It was inevitable that she would have died long before he would reawake. But her death had not been natural and had led Hydaelyn down a dark path and he, he could save her.
He could be, once again, a helper and an aide to a Hero.
It would be a long and arduous process and, if done properly, he wouldn’t even have a chance to truly even speak with her. For close to a century G’raha - nah, the Exarch - had poured over the problem that the Light presented, and where it was to go. In order to stop the flood and the calamity it needed to be excised from the First, and despite his best efforts the only viable option laid with his death.
But she would be saved. And that was enough.
-- and he had been a fool to think he could truly hide himself from her. His name had tumbled from her lips, and in that instant all his carefully laid plans had almost come undone. G’raha Tia?
“... I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I am only the Exarch.”
The time she spent in the First had been more than he ever imagined, and for the briefest moment G’raha had almost felt like he truly was adventuring with her. It was enough to ease any regrets and aches that still ran through his aching soul, and reaffirm his decision to play the ‘villain’, to act as if her efforts had all been in vain and to steal the accursed Light--
And then Y’shtola, then Urianger, then Emet-Selch himself...
Interruptions had not been accounted for, and Violette had nearly died because of it. She hadn’t, but the knowledge that she had been oh-so-close was another scar etched into his heart.
She was safe now, and they were working on a plan now, one that would allow G’raha to live and would return the souls of her companions to the First. Such a thing had been beyond his wildest dreams and it made the years he spent contemplating his own eventual death feel almost foolish. But that was the effect she had on everything she touched. She brought light to the dark, life to where there had only been death, and hope followed in her footsteps.
“Taking time out to visit an old man?” Amusement was laced in his tone as the Exarch glanced up from the tome he had been going through. He had recognized her from her footsteps alone, but there was little chance he would turn down the opportunity to speak with Violette.
