#sc&p

A classic response, but Otolin’s hand is outstretched still. After a few beats, Emelyn reluctantly offers her left hand over. An arrow is still lodged through the center of her palm, courtesy of Severine. Her shots over the course of the battle had struck true. 

“I’m going to-” Otolin begins to say. 

“Just pull the damn thing out,” she groans, rolling her eyes. “You and I don’t need-”

It’s pulled out in a smooth motion without much warning from there, and even more blood just spills onto the tiles below, shifting and shimmering in the moonlight. Emelyn doesn’t even react, still glaring, except for the little wince that springs forward and then out of existence upon her scarred lips. 

“You let your friends do the fighting for you,” she intones after a few beats. 

“There was a sentiment of wanting to… to kill you,” Otolin responds, tossing the arrow aside with some bit of abandon. 

“Little do they know-” Emelyn tries to say with a biting tone.

“They know,” he cuts her off now, brows furrowing. “And they have their… thoughts. Their feelings. Their sympathy. Their-”

“The Viera…” Emelyn says with a small smile. “She isn’t happy with it, is she?”

Otolin shakes his head in response. “No. She… she has history with the Garleans much like you and I do. To hear that I-”

“You were their puppet.”

An accusation that isn’t wrong, and is perhaps designed to draw a reaction from Otolin.

But he just stares, brows furrowed, head tilted. The same look as always. 

Emelyn just rolls her eyes in response, looking away, as Otolin reaches for the arrow lodged in her shoulder and pulls it out with a swift motion. Another strike by Severine that had found its target. 

“I was,” he admits quietly with a nod, tossing that arrow aside. “Unknowingly. I-”

“That’s not an excuse,” Emelyn spats, her nostrils flaring as best as they can; her anger is rising again. “You… you continue to say that…”

“Then what would you like me to say?” Otolin asks of her in that calm tone. 

She’s furious again. Slowly and shakily, Emelyn rises to her feet, trying to regain her faculties, trying to make sense of things. The room shakes and shifts before her, but she stabilizes, counting under her breath like her masters taught so long ago.  

Blood streams from her shoulder, and also from between her closed fist, nails streaked. She turns away from her son, looking to the statues around the room. Something begins to build, a sense of the impending storm, but then…

Otolin reaches out and grasps her wrist. 

He just stands there, looking at her, brows furrowed still. That calm expression is etched on his features. “What would you like me to say?” 

Emelyn turns to look at Otolin. She doesn’t tug at the hand on her wrist, doesn’t move much other than her head craning to meet her son. 

“Nothing.”

A small pause.

“I want you to say nothing.”

Then she turns, gathering whatever last bits of aether she can muster, and brings her free hand around in a strike centered right on Otolin’s chest. It’s fast enough that he can’t dodge it, can’t block, can’t use that damned ability of his to stop it.

Her palm connects with his sternum, and then twists at the wrist, before… settling there. Waiting. Watching. 

Emelyn smiles. 

She may have lost the war, but she wins this-

Then she looks to her son’s face and sees nothing.

No. 

That same stare. Those furrowed brows. The tilted head. 

No. No. No.

“I… I-I-I…” She stammers, letting her hand drop from his chest and wrenching her wrist away from Otolin’s grasp. A step back, and then another. Her head shakes back and forth, fingers dripping with her own blood still. “That should’ve… THAT SHOULD’VE-”

“It didn’t.” 

Otolin looks down to his chest, and then back up to Emelyn. His lips twist in a deeper frown, and his head shakes. 

“I’ve given you… you every opportunity to leave. To live. And you continue to… to try and defy that. You’re hunting… hunting a monster that isn’t here anymore. Your life is so centered around destruction of some sort that… my end is the thing that fills… fills your void. You’ll… you’ll move… on to the next thing after me, until there is nothing left. You’ve forgotten that life… life is as much a part of His cycle as anything else is.”

He takes a step forward finally, and that seems to freeze the woman in her tracks, continuing to speak. The words aren’t rehearsed, even if they sound like they are.

“You…”

“Stay away from me. Stay the fuck away from me.”

“Honor our deal.”

“I’ll… I’ll honor it.”

“You’re going… going to walk into that desert. You won’t go back to the commune. They no longer have need of your guidance. Others will take up the mantle, younger people who see… see a better world ahead of them unlike you.” 

He closes the gap. 

Emelyn hasn’t moved still. If anything, there’s still a bit of defiance in her stance, eyes pointed upward to Otolin. She bares her teeth, wincing under the pain of her broken features. 

When Otolin speaks next, it’s with a deathly whisper.

“So… what would you like me to say?”

And when Emelyn speaks?

She doesn’t hear the words that leave her lips. 

Just feels them.

“I’m sorry for everything.”

Otolin stares, leaning back for a moment, and then there’s a split second where perhaps a fury might take over his features, but-

No.

The same blank stare, the tilt of the head, those furrowed brows.

Then he leans in.

“You first.”

“You’re considering the ways in which you get out of this cell,” Emelyn continues, her feet moving against the old stones beneath them. “Each second an equation. How long does it take the door to open, and then close. How many people I have stationed outside. Down the hallway. Out into the courtyard, and then down the steps.”

Each little bit of Emelyn sentence is followed by a step, measured carefully. Her raven-black hair has been braided, keeping still about her shoulders, and the sneer on her features is uncovered by a small shaft of light that strikes through from above. 

Calling it a sneer would be doing it a service. It’s a smile. An angry one. A happy one. 

Otolin opens one eye, and just tilts his head. 

No response still. 

“Manners weren’t included, I know,” she goes on, tilting her head from one side to the next briefly. “But you were taught to respect your elders, weren’t you?”

“I thought I was the elder,” Otolin murmurs in response, barely audible. 

Finally a response. The sneer on Emelyn’s features grows a touch lighter, lips unfurling, and then she laughs darkly. “Please…” She groans, shaking her head. “Don’t be insufferable.”

“I picked up… learned everything from you, so…” He responds, looking up to her with both eyes open.

WHAM.

Emelyn’s fist finds the side of Otolin’s head with force, little specks of orange and purple energy circulating around her knuckles, but it doesn’t send him flying. No, instead, he just stays still, head shifting under the contact of her face to just stare.

Keep staring.

Unblinking.

His mother stares right back, features contorted with the sort of fury that can’t be matched. Her brown eyes are wide and teeth are bare. 

“You’re not maneuvering with enough space in the room to really… really throw that strike.”

WHAM.

Another.

Otolin doesn’t move.

WHAM. Another. WHAM. WHAM. WHAM. Three more strikes. Not a thing changes on the man’s face. He just keeps staring at her, still unburdened by the brutality Emelyn brings to bear upon her one and only son. 

WHAM.

A last strike.

She’s breathing heavy and backs away, fists hanging loosely by her sides. The conflict in Emelyn’s face is easy to see, the way she wants to just scream, to let loose on him.

Not a word. Otolin knows better. She’s always been like this, letting her temper and rage fly in a way that gives greater credence and creativity to her fists. Her feet. The way she fights and murders with ease. 

He doesn’t give her the satisfaction.

Severine would be proud, to some degree. 

“You’re still as…” Emelyn breathes, nostrils flaring. “Still as-”

“Still as frustrating? As… unteachable? As what?” Otolin says, cutting her off.

“As much of a pain in my ass as you were all those years ago…” She sighs, shaking her head and then closing her eyes. “Why didn’t I just kill you-”

“You could do that now, and you’re… you’re-” Otolin cuts her off again.

WHAM.

This strike catches him off guard. Most don’t.

He goes down in a heap, head nearly crashing with the stones beneath but his hands are there to catch him by some form of reflex. Something warm, familiar, begins to pool near the top of his head.

Blood.

His blood.

The smile is back on Emelyn’s face. 

“I mean, I could. I should…” She says, that smile widening, cheshire-like. “But I want… want our people to see your face one more time. To see that little shit-eating look of yours.”

Otolin turns his head to look back up at her, the frown on his features carefully wrought. There’s no sign of the pain from the cut she’s opened with her fist; just the frown, the furrowed brows, that trademark look he’s made his own.

“There it is,” she rasps, crouching down and leaning in before reaching out with a hand to take hold of his jaw and look him in the eyes. “There’s that fucking look.” 

He can hear it.

The anger that’s being barely held back.

“You’d kill me… me for leaving?” Otolin quietly asks, able to get the words out despite the hold. “Just… just for that?”

Emelyn’s eyes go wide, but her hold on his face keeps narrow. There’s something going on, something Otolin can’t read, but when she speaks, it’s with some form of humor in her tone, like she finds this all suddenly funny.

“Wait, you think…” She begins before pausing, her laughter barely held back as she continues. “You think I want to kill you for leaving? For fucking that? You… you don’t know, do you?” 

“Know… know what?” 

The question doesn’t need to be asked, because the answer comes to mind.

Otolin’s eyes go wide. 

Everything begins to come together, a puzzle that’s all too easy to piece with the context of the moment. 

His discussions with Severine about this past, about the gap in his memory.

The talks he had with Silvestre, the strange similarities they had, the things they seemed to know.

It was all about the why and less about the what. 

Emelyn laughs again, that smile turning shit-eating. She regards Otolin like prey, not letting go of the vice-grip she’s easily established around his jaw, and tilts his head from side to side. Her own head tilts up as though thinking, and then nods.

“I don’t want to kill you because you left, Otolin,” she chortles, shaking her head. “No, I’m going to kill you for killing us.”

“What?”

Otolin can’t get any other words out. He knew it was coming, but this… this is different. 

This isn’t how he expected it.

“Oh, how I’d love for you to tell you to not play fucking dumbass in this moment…” Emelyn rasps. “But I can’t. I just can’t. You weren’t you. The Garleans fucked with your head. It’s something they’re good at, and then they sent you after us.”

“I… I defended everyone when… when they tried to escape from them-” Otolin tries to retort, lips able to form words. 

It was the last memory he had. 

The Garleans, their forces ambushing the commune in the crevasses with that ruthless efficiency. Men, women, and children dying under a hail of gunfire. There had only been a few survivors, and Otolin was among them.

He had been a child. 

But age never mattered. It never did. He had been a child, but one who could kill. With ease. He had ripped and torn through the Garleans’ armor and their gunfire hadn’t left a mark on his, the steel-skin he had become so infamous for. 

“The canyon? Oh, is that what they put in your fucking head?” Emelyn teases, reaching up with a hand and poking him right in the cut she’s opened with a jabbing finger. “Because that’s not what happened. You think yourself our fucking hero?”

She lets go of him and stands tall above.

Too many thoughts.

Too much to process. 

The blood continues to pool and stream down Otolin’s face, running through the crevasses of his weathered features. He can’t bear to look at her, gaze instead on the stones below, watching the red viscous liquid run down the cobblestones and ease up at his fingers. 

That laugh echoes. 

“You’re not a fucking hero, Otolin.”

The rust-covered creak. 

“You’re a villain. Our monster…”

The door slams shut.

“... And I’m going to kill you for it.” 

Getting Valka stabilized had been her priority. They borrowed a cart from the Flames checkpoint up the road and got Viera back to the office so the Doctor could tend to her. The little Xaela checked over Severine, warned her she’d probably have a vicious headache and told her to stay hydrated. She drank more than her share of wine that night. Hydration achieved. Fear sat cloying in the back of her throat, souring every breath she drew and every word she spoke. She paced and flitted, checking in on Valka when she could, making sure word got to Adrian. They needed Valka’s help but Severine couldn’t bring herself to ask the Viera to track Otolin like she’d done before, not while she was still bedridden and healing. They needed to find him and Severine didn’t know where to start. Eventually Breandan told her to go home and she went outside for the first time in two days. Walked across the yard already back in order after the party they’d had the week before. When they and their friends had sat around the fire and floated in the hot springs and none of this had happened. She walked up the stairs and to the house next door. Otolin’s house. She let herself in and stood in the doorway, half expecting him to be there. Sitting at the kitchen table or in one chair by the fire, reading a book. The house was cold. Empty. She locked the door and moved through it in a daze. Like a ghost. She wondered why this had happened. What she’d done wrong. She wondered why they hadn’t all just been killed. Valka nearly had been. Emelyn easily could have killed Severine as well but had stopped at merely incapacitating her. If Otolin had gone down in a single hit from the pale-skinned Roegadyn woman that had subsequently hauled him away, then obviously he could have been killed there as well. Breandan had tried parlay and had been warned away. Surely Emelyn Stone had to know they would come for her. They would find where Otolin had been taken. Why would she leave them alive to do it? Without realizing it, Severine had walked through the quiet rooms of Otolin’s empty house. The little closet in his bedroom stood with one door half open, and she reached inside, pushed her hands towards the back. Going by touch alone. Tears had been constant ever since they’d returned from the failed ambush and she could feel her eyes stinging as her fingers closed around familiar fabric. She pulled and drew her arm back, patterned cloth draped over her arm. Otolin hadn’t worn his poncho much since he’d gotten his new coat. She’d thought maybe that he had gotten rid of it but there it was, curled in her dark hands. The patterns were faded into each other with wear, the trim around the collar limp with age. But it was clean. And soft. Severine bundled the poncho into her arms and carried it to the two reading chairs clustered in the corner. She folded herself into the left side one, legs drawn up beneath her. The last time she’d sat there Otolin had been in the chair next to her. She remembered the books they’d been reading - her an  intensely dry history of Limsa maritime laws and him some gormless crime thriller that he kept snorting at between sips of tea. He wasn’t there, though. And she didn’t know where he was. She balled the poncho up and tucked it beneath her cheek as she settled into the chair. The bed was across the room but that was the kind of empty that she didn’t think she’d be able to bear just now. Severine closed her eyes knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Instead she willed her mind to that place she could send it to. She walked through the sun-dappled grove that housed her memories and experiences and sat by the stream. With her eyes shut she pulled memories up like blades of grass, flipping through them like picture books. The first job she’d worked with Otolin. The room in the Quicksand they’d shared for months. Each job, each story they’d told each other. She could tell herself she was looking for clues. For some idea of where he might be right now. But really she knew that what she needed was him. Her partner. She couldn’t go out and search for him so she’d have to find him in one place she knew he would always be. As fleeting as it was she would have to take comfort in that.