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Isa, fifteen, a child overgrown, wraps around her mother in her mahogany rocking chair. Her legs dangle awkwardly over the solid, velvet-lined armrest, and the bones of Ameé's lap press uncomfortably into her haunches as she lays upon her, wetting her mother's shoulder with tears.
The news came three days ago of the Steel Vigil's fall. Everyone in Ishgard waited with bated breath for the confirmation of what they already knew. And this morning, Chlodebaimt de Haillenarte was confirmed to be among the dead.
It had taken until the night for the fact to sink into Arkao and Isa's shared, dazed mind.
Ameé had crept into their bedchamber to bid them goodnight and found Isa sobbing. She offered her nymeia tea and they drank it together wordlessly before Isa set down her drink on the low table and came over to curl up in her mother’s lap for comfort. Ameé received her with open arms.
"I know, darling, I know," she croons as they rock. Then, after a pregnant pause, "I'll tell you something I've never told you before. You were not my first angel."
Isa, too numb, cannot navigate her brain around this. She does not respond.
"Before you, I bore three children. A girl. A set of twin boys. None lasted beyond my womb. I understand well that to lose one you love is the hardest trial Halone has to give."
As her mother's fingers trailed through her long, white hair, Isa sniffs and exhales a ragged breath. "I'm sorry, mama."
"But she also gave me you. One day, you will find love and joy again. And just like your mother, you'll hold on tight to it and never let it go!" The arms around Isa squeeze tight and give her a little jostle, as Ameé laughs a warm laugh. Then her mother places a kiss on her forehead. "'Twill not be without struggle or peril. This life never is. But I will always be here to support you, Arkao. You'll always be mama’s baby."
Isa smiles smally.
The wind hisses as it blows ice through the towering arches lifting the city of Ishgard into the sky.
After much fumbling around, Arkao's foot finds purchase on the corner of a stone along the walls of House Fortemps. Cautiously he steps off the porch railing. Admittedly, Arkao never was an athlete, his hands are soft. But he is limber and determined enough to claw his way to the balconet encasing Haurchefant's window.
Arkao is lucky; for not a moment after knocking, the curtains are thrown open and the man himself faces him. The look on his face is one of surprise, confusion; for all the times Arkao has found him at his window, he has never seen Arkao at his. When Haurchefant flips the latch and lifts the window, Arkao says to him: "Let's go birding."
In the weeks following the fall of Steel Vigil, part of Arkao has been awash with relief, and he feels ashamed for it. He never truly enjoyed the relationship with Chlodebaimt. He felt pressured into it by his parents and Isa—whom he has only recently begun to recognize as one other than himself, though he did not understand it. He hated when Isa spent time with him. He hated his domineering presence and his politics, and Arkao was insecure of their immaturity next to Chlodebaimt, whose age exceeded his own by eight summers.
People, relationships, moments—they all come and go. Neither Arkao nor Isa are strangers to this. After all, Chlodebaimt was not even the first to take them. But all before him were nameless flings of fancy or some enabled lord's drunken conquest. Chlodebaimt was the only one who ever held promise to Isa, the only one who seemed to truly love her. And he did love her. Isa knows it.
But whether Arkao likes it or not, Chlodebaimt is—was—all that they had. It has become too strange to talk to Francel these days, and Chlodebaimt didn't much care for Haurchefant, who was growing busy with knighthood, anyway—yet another relationship slipping from his fingertips. And Arkao was not willing to let go.
"How have you been keeping, friend?" Haurchefant asks into the silence, once they are on the edge of the city. "It has been a while. Between my training and you…" he trails off. They both know what he means.
"I've been okay. Busy with school.”
There was a period of time, following the Calamity, that schooling had paused to address more pressing matters. Students were due to return a week and a half ago, and of those days Arkao has shown only twice—skipping to read in a corner of the library or wherever else he might find privacy whilst his parents believed him to be in class. The guilt of disobedience ate at both Arkao and Isa, but he couldn’t help himself. Schoolwork has started to pile and he knew, in time, that these secrets would catch up to them, too.
He continues, “How has… your training been?" Halone above, his voice sounds too flat. Awkward. For once upon a time, he would have known without asking.
Haurchefant huffs something between a laugh and a sigh. "Hither and thither. I have an underling, now. Many folk previously unaffiliated with the knights have taken up arms in a passion to avenge loved ones in the wake of the vigil's fall. Meanwhile a fair number of green knights have defected, I fear…"
"I don't suppose you're stirred, though," says Arkao. "You've always had a heart to protect others."
"Arkao, my friend, have I done aught to offend you?"
Arkao's lips part. Foolish though it was to think he might avoid the inevitable, or at least bear some measure of agency over it, he did not expect Haurchefant to confront him. Certainly not like this.
Guilt wells up within his body at his words. Haurchefant has never done anything wrong, ever in his life, besides the grave misfortune of having been born a bastard. "No. It is me who has offended you. And Francel. And everyone I love."
There you go. If you can't have control, take it. Arkao digs his nails deeply into the leather of his chocobo's reins to detach from the voice in his head.
And indeed, it is true. Haurchefant's head turns to him. Arkao keeps his gaze forward, focused on the path ahead where the snow gradually swallows the cobblestone before it gives way fully to the gray, muddy, ugly dirt road. "Francel worries often about you. As do I. You know, it has been moons since you and I last spoke."
Leaning lower unto his chocobo, Arkao mutters, "Chlodebaimt never told me."
"Well, Chlodebaimt never spoke about you to us, either."
Arkao—Isa rather, tears back the reins and forces their chocobo to a halt. As their chocobo squabbles and hackles her feathers in protest, Haurchefant must pull his bird around to get back to where they have stopped.
"How could you say that?" Isa's voice is shaken with emotion. A flare ignites within their body, swelling and swelling. "That cannot be true. You haven't the slightest idea what we had. Of course he would have spoken of me."
"I did not mean to—"
"He loved me!" It bursts out before Arkao could stop it. The two alters grapple to continue speaking together. "He told me that he loved me. He was the only one that loved me and now he is gone. I can never face anyone again!"
Their ribs inflate and deflate with heavy, shaking breaths. For a long stretch of time it appears Haurchefant is at a loss. He makes to speak before stopping, the cogs in his brain clearly working out several conflictions.
Haurchefant draws his chocobo in closer. Close enough to say softly to him, "You did not lose my friendship. Even in this."
Neither Arkao nor Isa can fashion an answer. Sobbing grossly. Elidhu shuffles uneasily in place underneath Arkao and Isa. The huffing and metallic clinking involved are the only noise heard in the silence between their sobs.
Arkao sniffs, "I missed you… the whole time."
Haurchefant drops his reins. He reaches out across the gap that spans between both of their birds and they meet him in the middle. They can not truly embrace, yet still Haurchefant's hands hold firm to their shoulder blades. They close their eyes.
It is not possible for Arkao and Isa to stay out long without arising concern and possible anger from their parents. Sitting on Haurchefant's bed, staring emptily into the space between his wardrobe and the door where his riding gear lies in a clump of leather, they reason to make the excuse that they were at the cathedral. Isa agrees only under the condition that they actually visit and do a confessional in the morning. This is easy enough. But Arkao wishes she would just go away and stop fronting for now altogether.
It is unlike him. A lot about him tonight is. Maybe he has just finally snapped, or maybe, he isn't himself at all. Nothing feels quite right, but at least the air is warm.
Arkao confessed everything on the ride home. Everything. About Chlodebaimt, his parents, Isa. Though he had never before heard the extent of it, Haurchefant has long since caught on to Sir and Lady Castillon's treatment of their son, being so close to him and having endured foul treatment of his own. He had already known about another alter, Gils, so to learn of Isa, Haurchefant was beyond understanding. He believed in Arkao that what he said was true. Thank Halone. The discussion of Chlodebaimt, however… Haurchefant's face had shown a struggle restrained.
"You can say it," they said finally. After all that was shared on their behalf, they couldn't take his withholding for even a portion of it. "I know what you must be thinking. Have been, all these years…"
Haurchefant kept his eyes forth. Vigilant as he always was on rides, tracking for any beasts or approaching riders in the distance, the moonlight catching on the sharp edge of his cheekbone and the curve of his nose. It took a moment for him to speak.
"Tell Isa that her heart is admirable. People like her—as yourself—are the reason for which I fight for the betterment of Ishgard."
Arkao was stunned silent after that. Not that Haurchefant would ever lecture him, but he half expected one. For all that he and Isa had done with an adult as yet a child themself. Isa, too, could fathom no feeling of hers into sentences to say. But a few yalms on, Arkao finally mustered, "I will tell her."
Now, Haurchefant is returning to the room with two mugs of hot cider. Neither are frequent drinkers, mind, but they decide if any night called for it, it would be this one. They are determined to loosen up and share camaraderie long overdue.
And not only has he brought the drinks, but he has brought a guest.
To Arkao and Isa, Haurchefant shrugs with a helpless smile on his face. "He caught me on my way to the kitchens."
Emmanellain says to them, "Couldn't sleep! I've been freezing my arse off in this Fury-damned weather these days." His pitiful expression shifts to a grin on his face, raising the mug in his hand. "Well, not any longer."
He crosses the room, and as he sits down on the bed beside Arkao (and the steadily fading Isa), his hand squeezes their shoulder. They get the feeling that Haurchefant may have explained a thing or two, but it hardly matters. Now is a normal night, of brothers getting sottish and enjoying themselves. Haurchefant closes the door, passes Arkao his mug, sits back in a chair, and they get to drinking.
The trio chit chat about recent goings-on; Haurchefant hasn't much more to say about his knight training, having discussed it earlier, but Emmanellain has much to say about the family's courier.
"Manservant, now, dear brother," Emmanellain corrects Haurchefant upon referring to him as such.
Haurchefant waves. "Right! Indeed, it wouldn't do to discredit the boy."
They speak of Honoroit, a young Brume orphan whom Emmanellain took in approximately three years prior. Emmanellain has apparently started instructing him since Arkao last spent time with the Fortemps family, and the boy has been getting along remarkably well. "He can even read some words better than me," sulks Emmanellain.
Arkao grins. It is unlike him to tease, but he supposes, with the warmth of alcohol in his belly, he is simply feeling emboldened. He says to Haurchefant, "I wonder how long before he begins to call Emmanellain ‘papa’?"
Emmanellain scoffs and waves his free hand dismissively. "Please, Honoroit is merely a dear friend to me! Though, I would love to have kids someday. Perhaps with a fair beauty like Marielle…"
Haurchefant sets his second emptied mug onto a side table. Then, tucking a leg underneath himself and leaning back, he says, "It would be nice to raise your own, wouldn't it? To see yourself and their mother in them, to instruct them in chocobo-back riding on their first hunt, to smother them embarrassingly in front of their peers...”
“Now, don’t tell me you would be that sort of parent!”
“And you would not be?” Haurchefant laughs at his brother.
“He would,” Arkao agrees. “Listen to how he already speaks of his manservant.”
Emmanellain sputters, tipsy and outnumbered. “Is it so bad to display affection—in a sincere way? I would be overcome daily with pride were I to have children, as that would not only mean that a truly ravishing maiden had allowed me to… ouch! You swiving…”
Arkao bursts out in laughter as Emmanellain picks up the candlestick he had been thwarted with and begins to assault Haurchefant with it. Arkao’s consciousness fades in and out from here; but he will remember the sight of watching his two pseudo brothers rough-housing on Haurchefant’s bedroom floor, laughing until his stomach ached, warm and happy.