Irony or penance. Gareth wasn’t sure what to call it.

Being at the Dusk Vigil had sheared his nerves. Memory howled horrible images through his mind, overlaying the scenes around him. He had pressed through the flashes of bodies in the snow, of blood steaming, of Jourdain, of his father. Helplessness scraped his throat raw, and he screamed against it, whirling lance and fury. Believe in yourself as I believe in you. The words were a mantra, Aymeric’s faith lending strength to the confidence Gareth tried to fake. He was aware of his former boyhood friend, Lisette, at his back, his side, conveying orders, and he focused on her aliveness – nearly the same volume as the ghosts behind his eyes.

The mission had been going fine, he had been distantly aware of that. And then everything fell apart. He had thrown himself in front of Nazaire, seeing the image of Jourdain in his place. And he had suffered pain for it.

The large wyrm had overtaken their ranks unexpectedly, tearing the fight to ribbons. Pain throttled Gareth into a nearby shelf of rock. He had picked himself up slowly, knee burning, had stumbled, tripped, struggled to retrieve his fallen lance. Too familiar. Bile had ached in his throat, had weaponized his breath. Father, his nerves had screamed.

“Retreat!” He had shouted, sprinting towards Nazaire, who seemed frozen in place. He saw himself, he felt his father’s spirit stir in his blood. “Retreat! Let me distract it!” He threw himself upon the wyrm. His lance sunk into its neck. It screeched and tossed its head, splattering hot blood upon Nazaire, the snow, Gareth’s own face. He held tight to the lance as it beat its wings, swiping at him with a desperate claw that caught his shoulder deeply. He cried out, nearly lost his blood-slicked grip on his father’s lance as the dragon carried him up into the sky. It tried to pry him off, talon digging in deeper and deeper. He held on with all his might.  

Below, his comrades fled.

The icy rush stung his cheek, his eyes, conflicted sharply with the heat of blood. He threw the entirety of his weight into driving the spear in further, twisted the haft with all his strength. The dragon’s cry was piercing. It plummeted rapidly, side hitting the ground hard. Gareth was sent flying; he rolled through the snow, only stopping when he collided with a rock. He breathed hard, cheek throbbing against a patch of ice. Blood oozed from the deep wound on his shoulder. The back of his head and the base of his spine throbbed terrifically. Blinking away haze he dragged his body through the snow. A few yalms away he could see the dragon, shrieking and writhing.

Pain searing his face, blood filling his eye, body heavy, lame. Dragging heavy body through the snow. Torches up ahead. Needing to get close. Desperate voice clogging throat. Bursting out helplessly.

The memory slipped back as he reached the dragon’s side, the spiked tip of its wing narrowly missing him. He strained, desperate to retrieve his father’s lance, still deeply buried in the dragon’s throat. Sharpness burst at the back of his skull, racing down his nerves like Levin. Memories that were not his own captured his world.

She circles the Dusk Vigil from the air, watching as her son kills the invading Ishgardians. It is a massacre she wished he would take no part in, but he is young and his blood runs hot and wild. A lone dragoon fights him, bleeding to death. He will not win against her son. But the dragoon does something unexpected. She shrieks in agony as he turns the lance upon her son. She flies to them, exacts vengeance with swift and violent ferocity. But it is hollow. Her son…Her son…She lays a wing upon him, watches over him helplessly as his life drains out into the snow, mingling with that of the man’s. And the lance, the dreaded lance that did it –

Is the one that’s pierced her now.

Gareth swallowed hard against the vision. His hands went slack on the haft. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly as her large eye shifted towards him. “I’m sorry your son died.”

Her sides heaved rapidly. “You sought it too,” she wheezed.

“Yes.” He blinked water from his eyes. “Looks like it’s ended both of us.” A cough interrupted his words. He stumbled, nearly losing his hold on the lance before gripping it with redoubled strength.

“My mourning is about to end,” she said.

“That was my father,” he replied, the words low and shaking. “I envy you your peace.” He tore the lance free with all of his might.

Her blood gushed upon the snow. She twitched. Then she was dead.

Gareth looked down helplessly at the lance in his hands, his vision dancing with dark spots. He trembled, the cold cutting to the bone, and found himself looking at a nearby cave. He stumbled towards it, the lance tumbling from nerveless fingers. He crawled inside. He pressed his back against one frigid cavern wall, and sat down hard.

His breath whistled, blood loss and cold already beginning to nibble at his consciousness. Will they send someone to find me? He wondered if anyone would think it’s even worth the risk.

He remembered the look on Nazaire’s face, that tableau of all-too familiar terror. He remembered feeling his father’s courage surge in his veins, as if the spirit of his father had replaced his own fragile strength. A smile touched his lips. Was this the justice Halone had always had planned for him? To die slowly in a cave, alone, too wounded to return home.

Irony or penance?

Ishgard. The home he had not seen for five years. Gareth’s heart felt heavy in his chest as they made their way through the Gates of Judgment, and up the Steps of Faith, now purged of the blood and bodies that had littered it like so many flowers. The gate leading into the city proper opened before them, and Gareth’s throat suddenly felt too tight for the passage of breath. Cold wind stirred, frigid and piercing. He squinted against the sting of its keen edge, his steps faltering.

For a moment, Gareth simply stood in the shadow of the city he had fled from, not minding if Aymeric and Lucia had continued on ahead. Before the imperious faces of grey rock, he felt so small. The eyes of the city were cast upon him, and his guilt doubled until the poison of panic spilled into his chest. The thought that he should turn back pulsed in his mind, plucked at his reflexes. But he could not. He had offered to help Ishgard, and he had meant it. This was his chance. And with the Scions scattered and missing, where else could he go? Returning to Gridania would be admitting defeat.

Gareth forced a steadying breath past the lump in his throat. Squaring his shoulders, he strode through the gates. The Foundation greeted him. Like everything else about his surroundings, it was cold, imposing. And yet, so familiar.

A strange sense of restoration washed over him, mingling strangely with the feeling of intrusion. I’m home, he thought, and a sad little smile crested his lips. His feet remembered the pathways, his eyes remembered every stone and brick, his lungs remembered the wintry sharpness of the clear air. He followed Aymeric, but in truth he needed no guide. You can never forget the land that births you. No matter how hard he had tried, there had been things he had never been able to let go of. And even if he was misshapen now, no longer belonging where he had started his life, he felt as if he somehow clicked into place, a bent puzzle piece that had been removed from the mosaic, finally pushed back into its slot.

Gareth touched the pendant at his throat as they came to a halt outside the Order of Knights Most Heavenly. Closing his eyes, he thought he could feel him. The shade of his father. Staring at him with disappointment, maybe even resentment. But for the first time in years, Gareth swore he felt him, could remember the details of his face as if it had only been minutes since he had last seen him.

Opening his eyes, he turned on his heel, allowing his gaze to linger upon each and every detail of the world around him. He drank it in deeply, these memories that were now no longer just images in his mind, but real things that breathed all around him. Perhaps to most he would look like a man staring at something he had never seen before with awe, but this was not the case. This was the gaze of a man who had been lost at sea for years and had finally returned home, seeing his land with fresh eyes tainted by nostalgia. 

Wordlessly, Gareth greeted the streets that had housed him, and prayed they would accept him once again. Feeling this odd collusion of newness and sameness, as if he were different and yet as if no years had passed, his hands began to shake.

Up on the parapets that lined the bridge linking the Steps of Faith with the Foundation of Ishgard, the prodigal dragoon made his stand. Gareth’s lungs burned. Dravanian blood, hot on his cheek, his hands, which gripped the hilt of his lance so tightly his knuckles went white. A breath juddered from his lips, spilling clouds across the air. Fear was a cold knife threatening his spine, sending shivers that made his heart race, heavy and fast in his chest. It was a fear he could not allow to break him, not when claws turned the very sky into a patchwork of razors, and dragon’s breath turned the air to steam.  

Ash mixed with the falling snow, flakes of grey nearly indistinguishable from the usual precipitation that afflicted Coerthas. Warmth and cold seeped into Gareth’s skin, tangled in his hair in equal measure, each scathing the flesh where they landed with tiny scorching bites. Yet these sensations were faint beneath the battle-pall thrown upon him, its fabrics woven by the adrenaline humming through his veins. He harnessed that adrenaline as best as he could, allowing it to flow throughout every muscle in his body. He tried not to think; if he did, his fear would claim him. Instead, he moved with a near recklessness, throwing himself at the attacking dravanians with haste and fury.

Again and again he stabbed the skylord that swept towards him, lashing out frenetically along with the other Scions fighting at his side. Blood scarred his boots. Already some of his comrades had fallen or taken serious injury. He could not let all of them die here, just as much as he could not let the dragons break through to the city that had birthed him. The lurid past mixed nauseatingly with the present, driving his lance until his hands stung. I cannot falter. I cannot falter. I cannot fail. With a low, rumbling wail, the skylord tore away from him, his lance slicing through its stomach as it peeled away, twisting through the air, throaty cries of pain chasing it like a shadow. Gareth watched it fly away, breathing hard, blinking sweat from his eyes. A shaking hand lifted from the lance, rubbing across his brow, smearing it with crimson.

A tremble resounded through the stones. Gareth’s gaze lowered to the larger part of the bridge below. The massive dragon Vishap lumbered across it, slowed by the dutiful assault of the warrior of light and a company of powerful fighters. Halone, guide them, Gareth prayed quickly below his breath as a wrathful screech boiled somewhere above him. His green gaze snapped back up to the heavens. A pair of wyverns streamed through the sky, swooping low to attack an elezen man adorned in gold and blue armour. No, not just any man. Wasn’t that the lord commander?