#wolardbert

god bless the patient @thepapernautilus, upon whose notifications I now bequeath this beast I have been working on. Thank you for tagging me!!!

Below is a very WIP take on my Eiraverse FFXIV fic, which will be snippets of the game through the lens mostly of wolardbert and wolexarch. Mwah.

"Stop," he says, looming down at her. Mist blurs her vision and his skin. "What are you talking about?" She blinks at him, trying to remember to breathe through her nose. Everything smells like muck. "Surely I do not need to explain sex to you." "What?" A strange beat passes. Like he still doesn't believe it. "No, I—I don't even know you. What are you…" His face is so red she can see it in the dim cloudlight and amid the distant glow of yellow lanterns. She gazes at him, hard and flinty. She makes herself such, so that his judgment or his hatred might bounce away from her like so much else. So he's a romantic? He somehow has kept that indulgence amid the loss of his world, has he? Meanwhile, she loses two lovers and decides she has no choice but to be beyond it. How…humiliating. The expression on his face suddenly turns scorching. "Are you hoping I'll hurt you?" She glares up at him, her heart pounding in her ears as if caught in a lie, and she yanks her arm out of his grip. "Excuse me?" He lets her go, but his lip curls in a way she finds unnecessary. "I wouldn't do that." "What? Debase yourself with me?" He reels back slightly. "Hey—" "We were both sad creatures drinking alone in a quiet, horrible pub," she hisses at him, temper rearing its ugly head. "That you followed me out is your choice, not mine." "Yes, you're right. Sorry." She pauses. He rubs the back of his neck, sighing heatedly. He closes his eyes, looking askance — all signs of weakness her pride doesn't allow anymore. "Are you really that lonely?" he asks. Eira, as a rule, does not enjoy cussing. She considers telling him to go fuck himself for how plainly he lays it out. "That you would ask me, I mean! Hells, woman. Come on." Arbert leans toward her slightly — something foolhardy in his amusement, a charm that once again compels her to keep looking. "To make fun of me? There's a lot of jokes on the table." Ice fills Eira's chest when she realizes exactly how he is looking at her: like a wounded animal. "Perhaps that would be pleasing, yes." Then he smiles. A little mocking…but also, strangely gentle. "Would it? Be pleasing?" She never should have entertained her heart's curiosity in the familiar tapestry of his memory. She rarely receives such texture in another's remembrance through the Echo — something bone-deep, a recognition she'd never before witnessed, not even in her own mother's gaze. What a foolish endeavor. "Do you not feel it?" she whispers, dark. "The desire to feel anything at all, other than your own crushing failures?" He leans in, blue eyes seething. "You lost the match, I recall." "You lost your entire world." They both stand here, wavering horribly as they lean in and in and in. "Which is worse?" she asks, her eyes stinging, unable to stop herself. "Watching an entire world die, or watching the light leave the eyes of the only people who ever understood you?" A muscle in his jaw twitches. And then, something in the world snaps. His arms go around her waist and he picks her up, lifts her so that she is at eye level with him — a bizarrely intimate hold, chest to chest, their noses nearly touching. "You know the answer to that," he whispers over her mouth. "I saw it."

yayyyy

Au Ra April Day 25: Magical

Scion!Ardbert AU in which a Heaven on High run has a bit of a complication.