#tza

Balthier and Fran:

Just a little something I wrote for my wonderful friend Ghost (@wxnderingstxrs-fr) of our boys, because he keeps having people not write him things when they say they will and it makes me sad because he writes the best stuff. So. Helios and Eleven belong to me, Helios’s boyfriend(s) Tza and Forge belong to him. <3

He wasn’t born for the Sea. Nor was his breed—nowhere in his heritage was there any trace of the Tidelord’s blood, any call to the waves. Not in his Wildclaw father or his Pearlcatcher mother, hailing from the Plague flight and the Wind flight…

And yet, there he sat, his whiskered face to the breeze and his magenta eyes closed serenely. Helios curled his claws into the sand, beaten smooth by the tide. He wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed—minutes, hours? The sun was behind him; he couldn’t track its progression across the sky, but it had not yet stretched into afternoon. Minutes, then. With a small sigh, he settled down into the sand against his better judgement. It was always a pain in the tail to shake all of it out of his apparel later on (though if he was lucky, apparel would…not be a concern this evening), but it was soft. Welcoming against his scales as he basked in the streaming sunlight.

Tza had gone for a walk on the isle with Eleven, who was all-too excited to show off the improvement of her magic. His adopted daughter had taken a liking to the Coliseum in the wake of the tragedy a few months back, using it to channel her fury until she found herself taking a true liking for combat. While sending her off with Petra for extended periods of time deeply unsettled him, she was always thrilled upon return. Helios had a sneaking suspicion she would end up coercing her father into showing her different applications and techniques. It was likely they wouldn’t return until the sun began its descent toward the horizon, but the Pearlcatcher was content—Eleven was happy, Tza was happy. Camano would be too, if she made it home from the Marketplace before Tza returned home. He was content to wait to spend time with the tiny Skydancer if he knew his daughters were happy.

Just as he laid his head down, intending to shut his eyes and doze off for a bit, a shadow passed over the sun, tinting the insides of his eyelids with a brief flicker of black against the red. The Guard wasn’t active on this side of the territory today, that he knew—no one was supposed to be, anyway. He quietly praised the deities that the shape had been far too large to be Petra, and he hadn’t heard any clumsy flapping. Curious, the Pearlcatcher opened his eyes, just as something large landed with a rustle of feathers in the sand behind him.

Helios whirled around, on his paws in an instant, ears pricked and a warning snarl already curling his lips. Even if there was no threat, whoever this asshole was had disturbed what was looking to be a perfectly good nap—

“Oh.” Helios flattened his ears a bit, straightening up out of his crouch. He blinked bemusedly at the Wildclaw that stood just a few meters away, his single eye wary as he brushed the sand away from his forearms. “Forge. Hey.”

The metalsmith only nodded in response, squinting up at the sun before surveying the horizon. “’S hotter here than I thought it’d be,” he mumbled. “I dunno how you wear all that withou’ melting.”

“Well hell, you want me to take it off?” Helios scoffed at him, sinking back onto his haunches. He hadn’t seen Forge since he left from his extended stay in the Ends with Tza’s clan, helping his mate recover and the clan rebuild itself. He and Tza had visited one another periodically, of course, but the metalsmith seemed to always make himself scarce. Perhaps out of respect. “Hello to you, too. Welcome to the Sea, where it’s hotter than the Ends. Like everywhere else in Sornieth.”

The Wildclaw smiled wryly, and Helios was happy to see that whatever weird little seeds of friendship that had been sown still grew. “Aye, you know what I meant.” He shook himself out a bit, his massive wings ruffling. “Jus’ trying to make conversation.”

Helios shook his head, turning back to face the ocean. He thumped his tail against the space next to him pointedly, an invitation for the other dragon to sit. “How about ya tell me what you’re doing here? Not that I’m not ecstatic to see you, of course.” He widened his eyes and held up a paw, mocking cautiousness.

Forge looked mildly surprised at the question, looking at Helios quizzically as he sprawled out and made himself comfortable. “Tza didn’t tell you? He was s’posed to let you know I was coming t’visit Eleven when I finished up with a set of shelves for Keeper’s supplies…and t’help him fly home and all.” His brows knit in worry. “Save you a trip, aye.”

“Oh.” Helios shrugged, then pointed his head back to face the ocean. “He took off with Eleven a little while ago, only the Tidelord knows what they’re up to. Hooligans.” The Pearlcatcher smiled fondly at the mental image of the pair of Skydancers frolicking together, squawking and chittering like the bizarre little birds they were.

“If you want to go look for them? I can take you. I figured I wouldn’t intrude, she sees me all the time.”

“Nah. The starling needs the time with his daughter. It’ll do ‘im well, I’ll catch up with her later,” Forge replied. He swung his head back to look at Helios. “If that’s, ah…all right with you, I’m content to just. Lay here.”

“You could do that,” Helios mused. “Or, if you wanted, you could try taking a swim. That was Tza’s brilliant idea when he came to the Sea for the first time, it went extremely well.”

Forge coughed out a rough-sounding laugh, and Helios joined in with a quiet snicker. “Yes, swimming with two iron legs. Rust and weight to pull me under. Only thing that’d go better would be throwing a twiggy Skydancer into the water.”

The laughter hung in the air between them for a moment before silence descended. Helios hadn’t realized both of Forge’s legs were prosthetic, and he almost wanted to ask how the Wildclaw lost them. Almost. He knew damn well that was against his better judgement. Can always ask Tza later, I guess.

Had the pair not laid together in mutual silence before, Helios would’ve been shuffling his paws and searching for something, anything, to say to fill the void. The rush of waves on the shore seemed to satisfy Forge; he watched intently with his single eye, glancing back and forth between the surf and the horizon. It was almost funny, to see such a weathered dragon whose scars spoke very clearly about the amount of life he had lived, so full of wonder about some damn water. The shit that Helios annoyedly wrung out of his dress at the end of every day, the shit he had to dive into at his superior’s commands.

And there Forge was, enraptured by the tide’s pull. Helios wanted to comment on it; make a crack about having never seen water before, or a simple question about whether the Wildclaw had seen the Sea from the ground. It just…seemed too peaceful a moment, though. The Pearlcatcher opted, for once, to hold his tongue.

The Wildclaw must’ve read his mind. “Sorry if ‘m quiet,” he said, tracing a single claw in absentminded patterns through the sand. “Never been here before. It’s real pretty. Very, very different from anywhere I’ve lived.”

Helios let out a soft huff of amusement. “Yeah, heh. I was the same way when I came from the Floating Isles, and the Isles literally float above an ocean. I don’t mind the quiet if you don’t?”

“Nope.” His reply was simple, but there was a warmth to it that Helios latched on to. Those nagging feelings of jealousy had long dissipated since they had worked together to help rehabilitate Tza, replaced by a cool acknowledgement of Forge’s importance to the little Skydancer. Maybe even a small liking for the Wildclaw’s honesty and gruffness—both could be refreshing, coming from a clan full of dragons with too many damn feelings. Forge had never been anything but kind to him, after the initial tension of their meeting.

Alas, the peace did not last. Perhaps five minutes had passed before a cry of “INCOMING!!!” shattered the quiet, and something heavy pelted into Helios, knocking him over in the sand.

“’Ey!” he yelped, kicking the Skydancer off of him with a bark of laughter. “Go beat up on someone else for a change, kid!”

Eleven leapt back, avoiding a blow from Helios’s foot, and flashed him a cocky grin. “I warned you and everything, Helios.” As she stepped back, Tza came trotting out of the underbrush, wings tucked close to his back and wearing a sheepish smile.

“I, ah…forgot to mention Forge was comin’,” he said, those cyan eyes of his holding a trace of worry as he met Helios’s gaze. The Pearlcatcher rolled back over and heaved himself to his paws as Eleven threw herself at her Wildclaw father to greet him.

“Don’t you worry about it, little bird,” Helios murmured, bumping his snout against Tza’s cheek. “We’re friends now, remember? I only tried to beat the shit out of him one time.”

“Not funny,” Tza snipped at him, but the small smile on his face spoke otherwise. He rested his head against Helios’s neck for a brief moment before turning away to where Eleven and Forge were standing.

“You traveled safely?” he asked Forge, flicking his tail against the Wildclaw’s shoulder. “Could’a flown faster, with those huge wings of yours, she’s been talkin’ my ear off about seein’ you again—”

“’Course I did.” Forge eyes briefly flicked to Helios, almost a habit now when interacting with Tza, before continuing. “We were jus’ talkin’ about taking a walk, her showing me around the territory a bit…if that’s. Okay?”

The question was aimed more at Helios than Tza, it seemed, but it was Tza who responded. “I’m tired, you two need to see each other. I got her to myself, now you two go. Have fun.” He waved his paws in a shooing motion toward the stretch of beach, and Helios chuckled quietly.

“You’re positive?” Forge began, but Eleven cut him off.

“Dad, he wants to be alone with not-Dad and talk. Probably about you.” She smacked him with her tail, eerily similar to Tza for a moment, before marching off down the beach.

“Eleven, we’ll be talking about how high-maintenance you are,” Helios called after them, smirking at the blush that crossed Tza’s face at the implications of being alone together. Tza’s headfeathers flared indignantly, and he turned to make his way past Helios, back inland and away from the water. He gently brushed against the Pearlcatcher as he went: a suggestion to follow and walk together.

Helios looked on fondly for a moment as Forge padded down the beach with Eleven. A smile had painted itself its way across Forge’s rough-featured face as his daughter gestured and chattered wildly. It was funny, really, how Helios had misjudged the metalsmith’s stone-faced exterior and taken him to be so no-nonsense. He knew firsthand that any mate of Tza’s would feel some degree of ruthless protectiveness over him, warranted or not, but…he suspected there was a soft heart under his scars and prosthesis. Far from the snarling creature Helios anticipated and feared. The Pearlcatcher stood there for a moment, watching down the beach as the pair grew smaller and smaller.

“Hey, you big oaf. You comin’?” Tza asked from behind him, his tone playful and blessedly light.

The Pearlcatcher had grown accustomed to the feeling of his face melting into softness whenever he heard Tza’s voice. It’d been…years, now. That specific sort of softness he was embarrassed of at first, feeling like a sappy hatchling, saved specifically for the little Skydancer that. Well, held his heart.

What he wasn’t accustomed to was his face haven already fallen soft.