#path companion

Five years after the Calamity, when Sinaka left the Sanctum of the Twelve to return to adventuring and heard rumors of adventurers lost in the Battle of Carteneau suddenly returning, that hard little lump in her chest only grew more insistent, and as time went on it just cut into her more and more with every disappointment. Reconnecting with the Scions? Maybe they’ve heard rumors of him - but they hadn’t. Returning to Ul’dah? Momodi might have picked up on some information - but she hadn’t.

Making new friends and forging a Free Company helped her move on with her life and try out new things, to grow as a person and as a leader and live her life with happiness and joy, but every now and again - like when returning to Coerthas, or to Mor Dhona, or a familiar campsite in the North Shroud - she would find herself on that precipice time and time again, hyperaware of Sol’s absence, of her loss, at once accepting that he was dead and gone while berating herself for thinking such a thing without proof, driving herself to paralysis until she could stuff it all back inside and lock the confusion away, moving past it as she had no answers and just dealing with it. After nearly two years, she was almost at peace with it…

and then Ishgard opened its doors to her, and that hope swelled and died a hundred times within the city, and then a hundred times more beyond it. Every chance of seeing him, every disappointment of not… being where he could have been for the past seven years drove her to emotional highs and lows that she never imagined existed, and the crushing feeling that sat with her as she looked back after the close of the Dragonsong War finally made her realize she had to let him go, alive or not.

That, then, would be the time her heart truly broke. Huddled up small and alone, talking to a linkshell that hadn’t been activated in seven years, pleading with it to answer her. Finally she gave up on him, finally she forced herself to accept it - Soliel Chastain-Chevalier was dead, and he wasn’t coming back. She cried out her pain, emptying out her paper-cut heart so it could be remade.

…and yet she still has that linkshell.

TLDR SINAKA’S “LOVE LIFE” NEVER GOT OFF THE GROUND AND HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT ONE GIGANTIC DRAWN-OUT HEARTBREAK SESSION KEPT IN PLAY WITH EQUAL PARTS STUBBORNNESS AND HOPE the end.

"Hey," Yda said, wandering over to sit with him.

"Hey," he replied, taking a deep breath and sitting up. "You doing all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. How--"

"How about Papalymo? And Thancred?"

She frowned. "They're all right, Zaine. Everyone is."

Not everyone.

Before he could say more, she stuck her finger against his lips. "How are you?" she demanded to know, glimpses of her blue eyes through the mask showing her own sadness and resolve. She removed her finger.

Zaine slumped. "I keep feeling like I did everything wrong. Missed something, forgot something. If I'd been a little more on guard--and I know, I know that's not how it works, I know you all rushed cuz you only found out too late, but I--" He rested his head in his hands, clutching his hair.

"I feel like 'it's not your fault' won't help, huh?"

He huffed out a bitter laugh. "No." They were silent for a moment. "I know he targeted her as a caster, as a threat. Even if I had been in her place, even if I had been on guard. And I know...Evienne chose this, same as the rest of us, but it...Gods, this hurts."

"Of course it does," Yda replied softly. "It will for a long while."

He sat back now, leaning on the wall behind him, Yda watching. "If I knew anything of Eorzean etiquette as a boy, I forgot it. Evienne, though...she had impeccable manners. And took it upon herself to teach me better. My rough soldier ways grated on her lady's sensibilities." He smiled thinly. "I don't think I'd have made half as good an impression on all those people without her. And nevermind how many of her own heroics have been overlooked. It's not fair."

"A lot of things aren't," Yda said. "Minfilia's speaking to her sister, and her son. He's so little."

"Yeah," Zaine said. "Not much older than my sister was, when we lost our father. This kid's lost both his parents now and I don't...I feel like I should say something, but what? 'I was your mum's partner but failed to protect her from a Garlean bullet'?"

"Zaine, you can't say that."

"No, of course not, I just," he pinched his nose, trying to stay the renewed feeling of prickling heat in his eyes, threatening another deluge. "I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. She would know; that's what she was good at! It's all her clever words and maneuvering that's made me seem a hero; people think I know what I'm doing, but I don't. And there's still so much happening, no time to sit here and wallow, but Sisters help me, I don't know how I'm going to do it without her!"

The tears fell despite his attempts; guilt and shame as much as grief pouring from him. Yda was silent, simply holding his hand, squeezing tightly, a reminder he had more friends and allies, more people to help, to rely on.

Just not his companion.

--

She privately doubted it, but it would be unseemly to argue the point. The Midlander was young and impetuous—which did make him one of the best fighters she ever had the pleasure to work with, and an asset to the Path of the Twelve. And, privately, she enjoyed his boundless enthusiasm and optimism.

Could do with slightly less sass, though. The boy’s manners oft times left her sighing in frustration.

The hamlet of Fawn’s Hollow had seen better times, she thought, as they rode among its buildings. It was a sleepy little farming village; always had been, likely always would be. They were far enough south that the buildings were mostly built of wood, with foundations and perhaps partial walls of stone. But some buildings were empty, and there was obvious space for more animals than she saw in the barnyards and open stables, even accounting for the sheep that must be out in the fields at this time of day.

“No one rebuilt it,” Zaine said, incredulous, as they paused in front of a ruin of a house. It had been burned down many years ago, the still-useable materials long since scavenged, the frame and rotted remnants left to the elements, in between two other homes. The one to Evienne’s left had a slightly-less-weathered addition built on the side facing the burned house. The building to their right had been repainted recently, its trim and windows redone, so it was hard to say what damages it had suffered, if any, from the event.

Zaine dismounted, patting Snowlight’s shoulder as was his habit, as he stepped between the low garden walls and into the short front yard. “I remember this fence being taller.”

“You were a child,” Evienne said, dismounting from Sunflower. “Of course all looked larger.” She tried to keep her tone kind for him.

“I suppose so.” He walked up the two shallow steps and into the ruin of his childhood home. “I know I’m not likely to find anything here, either,” he continued. “Not sure what I’m looking for, really.”

Evienne said nothing, simply nodded. She turned, sensing the attention they had garnered, and so saw the middle-aged Hyuran man coming to hail them. She signaled to Zaine to let her speak first. “Hey now! What might you two be doing?”

She smiled politely. “Hello, and we are sorry if we are causing a disruption. My companion, you see, was born here, but has been abroad many years, and wished to visit.”

The man peered as Zaine came closer, the fellow’s eyebrows raising halfway to his receding hairline. “That can’t be little Zaine Striker?”

“Yessir, I am.”

Evienne had to admit Zaine cut quite the figure in his adventuring gear, with the war axe on his back. He wasn’t especially tall, nor broader built than average, yet the confident way he carried himself made him seem bigger somehow, like one of the heroes from the stories.

And to many people across the realm already, he very well might be.

Evienne, for her part, was simply happy if the boy did a better job trying to keep himself alive—but that was what she was for.

“Well I’ll be,” the man said, shaking his head. “Last I heard, your ma’d taken you and your sister to Thavnair. Now here y’are. Look just like your pa, too, even got his eyes.”

“So I’ve been told,” Zaine said. He looked shy for a moment. “I was wondering, is Nana Michelle still here? Or…?”

“Ah, she is,” the man said, shaking his head. “She’s not long for this world, though, Halone bless her. Helped raise up the children in this village long enough she certainly deserves her place in the Heavens.” The man considered and then pointed toward a small house with faded blue trim. “Still in her same place, with folk checkin’ on her through the day. Could be she’d like to see you, and hear of your family since…well, since leavin’.” The man looked at the ruin of the house.

“I’m surprised no one rebuilt it,” Zaine said. 

The man shook his head. “No one knew who had the deeds after, and your ma hadn’t the mind to settle it before leavin’, with the runaround the magistrates were given’ her, not to mention the Inquisition investigation. It mostly served as a warning that the war can even touch us here. Then many of our younger folk left to find their fortunes elsewhere, after we had a few bad seasons. There’s talk of clearing the lot entirely to repurpose, but always something else to do.”

“I see,” Zaine said. “Well, we don’t want to take too much of your time.”

“Oh not at all, not at all,” the man said, urging them to follow him. “Not every day one of ours comes home, and from Thavnair! What a difference that must be!”

“It is,” Zaine said, smiling politely.

The man jabbered on, pointing out places and people for Zaine to remember, as he took them to the house marked out as Michelle’s.

From conversations on the way, Evienne knew that the distance from his mother’s family, and some sort of issues with his father’s he was never clear on, meant Zaine had not spent his first ten years with the usual support of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Nana Michelle, a woman widowed young with no children of her own, had aided his parents in caring for Zaine and his sister. And, apparently, most of the rest of this village.

The man knocked, a young elezan woman answering. “Visitors for Nana,” he said. “She’s not sleeping, is she?”

The woman shook her head. “She’s having her tea, and will be pleased to see you.”

“I shall wait—”

“You’re coming too, Evienne,” Zaine interrupted. “She’ll be happy to meet my friend.”

The young woman led them in, and introduced them to an elderly elezan woman sitting in a chair propped up by pillows at a small table. She beamed. “Oh, Zaine!” she said, holding her hands out.

He took her slim, shaky hands and gently squeezed them. “Hello, Nana, it’s been too long.”

“It has, it has! I’ve gotten some letters from your mother over the years, dearie, but I didn’t know you had returned to Eorzea!”

“She wasn’t too pleased with the idea, to be honest,” he said. “But I wanted to return.”

“Of course, of course. And this is your friend?”

“Evienne, my comrade in arms. She keeps me in one piece.” He grinned.

“Thank you for that, dearie,” Michelle said. “Please sit, both of you, and join me. Patrice, dearie, can you get them—”

“Already working on it, Nana,” the young elezen woman said, soon bringing them mugs and plates.

They passed a pleasant hour, Zaine and Michelle catching up, and Evienne only had to kick his shins twice the entire time to remind him of manners; he was perhaps the best behaved at table she had ever seen him.

But eventually, the elderly woman needed her rest after tea. Zaine was quick to get up to help her stand, and she reached up to pat his cheek.

“I’m so glad I got to see you, dearie, even as bad as my sight is now,” she chuckled. “You should visit your father, too.”

“I plan on it,” he said quietly.

“Very good. Do send my love to your mother and sister, dearie. Gracious, little Aeryn must be quite the lovely young woman now, like your mother at that age.”

Zaine grinned. “I suppose, though Mama’s still the prettiest woman on Hydaelyn. You still give her stiff competition though, Nana.”

Michelle chuckled. “Charmer; it was lovely to visit, dearie.”

Evienne listened to them give their goodbyes, lingering as much as possible before the elderly woman simply had to be put to bed. Then Evienne gave her own, proper goodbyes, signaling to Zaine it was well and truly time to leave.

As they left he let out a deep breath. “It was nice to see her; I doubt I will again,” he mused.

“We never do know,” Evienne countered. She looked at him. “Are you ready to visit your father, then?” she asked gently.

He nodded, and turned to the lichyard behind the little chapel.

They did not speak as he moved between the graves, searching for the right marker. “There wasn’t much left, from what I remember. He was in the center of the fire. The Azure Dragoon said he was taken quickly by the dragon.”

Evienne simply nodded, and pointed to a marker. “I think there.”

Zaine followed her eye, and then went that way. It was a simple mark, with Corran Striker’s name and dates of birth and death, ‘faithful husband and father’ scrawled below.

“Hello, da,” he said quietly, pulling a pressed Nymeia lilly from his pack to leave at the mark, then bowing his head in prayer.

 She calmed, her breathing almost even… until she suddenly started sobbing, curling over on herself as the painful crying shook her. She couldn’t just do that. Her legs weakening, she turned and slid down the wall until she was curled at its base, her hands on either side of her head, elbows on her knees, knees drawn up to her chest, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She couldn’t just do that. Her mother had been able to bury her father, had been able to mourn him properly, to remember him with others of their family. And she? She didn’t even know if Sol were truly dead. That she hadn’t found him in Ishgard, or Coerthas, or Dravania, or the Sea of Clouds… she curled further in the idiocy of her own excuses, her forehead resting on her knees as she hugged herself tightly, her tail wrapping around her ankles futilely. She hadn’t found him; no one had heard of him, wasn’t that proof enough of his death? And yet… and yet without a body how could she be sure? But wasn’t it time enough to give up on the notion that he could still be alive, and let him go?

 She cried herself out, wrapped in her own arms and tail, thinking back on their years together. How they had met, how annoying he had been, how stupid and pompous and yet there, standing up for his convictions even when they weren’t exactly popular, offering to help when no one had asked, putting his faith in missions because he believed they should go through with it, no matter the risk or the cost or the impossibility of it all. She replayed those tense nights in the Sylphlands, and the quiet arguments that gave way to conversation; she remembered the fire in his eyes, and how right it felt to stand up with him. The way he looked at her towards the end, the way she felt…

 But if he were still alive, even if he had reappeared three years ago with those others, why hadn’t he tried to reach her? She wasn’t hard to find.

 Naught but a husk of herself, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the soft yellow linkpearl, and tapped on it, unable to help holding it up to her ear, fitting it snugly inside. She tapped it again, and it chirped in response… but there was no static, no answer to her call. She kept her hand to her ear, listening to the silence, breathing deeply. When she spoke, her voice rasped.

 “Say something.”

 There was no answer.

 She cleared her throat. “I would have followed you anywhere.”

 “Say something.”

 Nothing.

 “Say something,” her voice was a whine, begging for an answer.

 “I’m giving up on you.”

 It hurt to say, the pain resonating within her heart like the ringing of a great bell. It was the most she had said to him since the days following the Calamity; though it was not the first time she had tapped on their linkpearl, it was the first time she actually spoke to him, or whatever was left of him… or her memory of him. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to you.” Her voice echoed in the cave she had made of her body, the apology one she had always meant to say to him when she found him, despite knowing that she had done her best to stay with him when Bahamut broke through the shell of Dalamud. She remembered that last sight of him so clearly as chaos erupted on the field, bodies pushing between them and driving them apart. He hadn’t even looked over; had he heard her yelling for him? The last she had seen of him, he had been brandishing his lance, the light from the explosion dancing on his helm as she was swept away by the crowd and cries of pain. What had he seen last of her? … What had he seen last at all?

 “I love you, Sol,” she whispered, finally releasing the words she had held to herself for eight years, and finally let him go. “And I’m saying goodbye.”

 Nothing happened. Some part of her was still expecting to hear something – the sound of a voice she half-remembered, but she was met only with a silence so final that she couldn’t make any more excuses. And yet she hesitated in removing the pearl. Her fingers twitched once as she mouthed say something, but after three more heartbeats of nothing, she slowly removed the device from her ear and dropped it into the palm of her hand, staring at its smooth surface as though transfixed. Part of her imagined getting up and throwing it over the edge, into the falls… but she knew she couldn’t go through with that.

 It was all she had of him.

 After a while of staring, her eyes glazing over in numb non-thinking, she knew she was as good as she was going to get. She moved muscles made stiff with strain and stood, taking another deep breath of the night air, and wiped her face with her sleeve to remove the dried tear streaks; with enough night air, they shouldn’t be able to notice. She took a deep breath, tucked the linkpearl back into her pocket, forced her lips into a smile and whistled for Shenanigans.