“i only know that i feel tired, antiqued; i feel as though i’ve been awake for a long long time”
synopsis: when the exhaustion of loving finally takes you.
tags: xavier x non!mc, ANGST!!! hurt/ comfort(?)
likes + comments + reblogs appreciated
authors note: xavier’s version of this. let me know if you want versions of the other Lis. also please give me some ideas!!! divider by: @fairytopea
Laughter has never been so suffocating.
You watch, not from a distance, but next to MC.
You think it's worse to be this close and to hear everything you're hearing now. In all the years of trials and tribulations of knowing Xavier, have you ever heard him laugh so brightly, smile so widely, or love so loudly?
The quiet, ever aloof prince of Philos—the man you followed, crossing stars, passing meteors, abandoning the place you once called home—beams brighter than his evil.
You think about all the things that built up to this moment.
To you, he was the stars: bright and all-encompassing. His silence—always silent—ever consuming, as you trailed in the shadow he left behind. Throughout the years of companionship and camaraderie, you followed blindly, as you always do, even when you knew what following him meant: an ill-fated destiny you could never rewrite.
You knew MC once before—the same woman who took the world by storm, a hurricane in his life that devoured him whole, leaving nothing for you behind.
Just like the MC you once knew, this MC is just as captivating.
The universe is playing a sick joke. He is your longest companion, the very last of your kind—the last light of your planet, your world, your culture. You left it all behind because, to you, loving him meant more than the comfort of your people and the safety of your planet. Loving him was worth leaving everything behind.
Ironically enough, he thought the same thing.
And despite it all—the friendship, the companionship, the camaraderie—you’re not even a placeholder for the love he holds dear. Nothing but white noise that followed him around, that clung to him at every turn.
A persistent, pathetic, piteous echo.
You are so close, and yet, so far.
Pulled in by the gravity of his very being. You think—thought—that all this time, just being beside him would be enough to soothe the dull ache of your heart, the perpetual pain that roamed your bones, and the exhaustion that swallowed you whole.
Like a dreamer, you think of the ways he could love you in the same capacity he loves her. That if you show up enough times, reach out and fill the silence he leaves behind; that the days of dedicated devotion, the sacrifices made along the way, would surmise to something worthy of being loved.
You’re left stranded in his orbit, gravity pulling harder the more you think you’ve got a handle on your thoughts. The pain, the agony, the suffering. Thinking that sticking by his side was all you ever needed, that you can’t be greedy—because having him was enough, and having him be yours was pure insanity.
You hear the laughter erupt once again, likely from a silly joke MC made. You pull yourself out from whatever hole you've dug, pull your lips into a smile the best you can, laughing along. It's hearty and very becoming of your character, you think, since MC wraps a secure arm around yours and squeezes with affection.
You allow her, of course—straining your cheeks until they burn, letting out a long-drawn sigh that fills the room.
Despite what others may think, as you converse along luridly, as if the volume of your voice could hide the heavy heart you bear, you've never been so quiet.
You once thought that the convenience of being neighbours was a good thing.
Next door to Xavier—close to him, but never next to him.
Walking to the Hunters Association together, coming home together, eating together. Just being together.
But you could tell Xavier wasn’t ever there—not really.
Despite being with him for so long, his mind was usually elsewhere. Sometimes in dreamland, but mostly—actually, always—drifting to her.
At some point, in between the solo bickering and one-woman conversations, you, too, found yourself wandering.
Like your mind sanctioned itself in your own self-made isolation.
Quieter. Smaller. Dimmer.
You stop talking as vividly—maintaining just enough energy to keep up appearances. Your voice, so used to fading into the background, remained where it was so oftentimes pushed towards—away from everything. Everyone.
You stop tagging along in the mornings, early days, and late nights, save for the obligatory lunch with your co-workers.
You stop leaving your apartment, taking refuge in a bed you’ve grooved your body into, like a coffin awaiting your arrival. An apartment you’ve grown used to, replicating the only home you knew.
And you’re just so tired. Tired of it all. Exhaustion clings to you like chasing breath. Sleep evades you like the plague.
It was your choice to cling to hope—to leave your home and to follow, naively, in hopes that one day, he would look at you the same way you look at him. To experience his love: the soft edges, the warmth, the gentleness. To think quiet, everlasting devotion would get you anywhere—devotion that controlled you, consumed you. Devotion that you thought would be enough, as silly as it sounds, to at least hold a candle next to the sun.
Devotion that instead puts you in the hands of despair.
You’re stupid to still hope, to yearn for a love that was never yours to have. To attempt to go against fate—against an entire lifetime of love.
So really, it was your burden to bear—and bear it alone.
And the funniest thing of it all? Xavier never once visited you. Checked on you. Sought you out. Even the tenant right below you, Charlie, visited, offering warm welcomes of fresh bread and a simple smile.
As you lie on your couch, enveloping yourself in the embrace of your own naivety, forced by Jenna to take a day off, you listen to the familiar silence.
Which is soon broken by the snubbed sound of light that snuffs the room.
It’s the first time in weeks—29 days, 21 hours, 2 minutes—Xavier has stepped foot in your apartment.
You don’t make a move to look at him or say anything like you normally do.
You both reside in the deafening silence. One by choice, one succumbed.
For the first time, Xavier breaks the silence: “You weren’t at work today.”
You could laugh, scream, cry, or all of the above, but you don’t.
Quietness reaps your soul.
Xavier continues. “MC was worried about you.”
A lifetime's worth of companionship, and he wasn’t even here to seek you out.
Xavier isn’t used to the silence—not this kind. Despite being so quiet all the time, this silence was completely foreign. It was heavy and uninviting, almost suffocating.
There’s a moment of unrelenting anticipation as he waits to see you respond.
When you don’t, he steps forward. One step, then two—then he’s at the foot of the couch, peering down at you like a deity summoned—unconsciously shining with that light of his.
Steel blue eyes bore into you, trying to read you.
But you’re too fractured to be read. At least not clearly.
‘Am I okay?’ You want to laugh at the thought, to make fun of the words asked.
You miss it all—your family, your friends, your people, your home.
To think, once there was a time you chose to abandon it all in the name of love—where you thought complacency was where you belonged: beside a man you knew never loved you, maybe never even liked you.
Now you can only sneer at the fact, as you reminisce about a place far and forgotten, only finding a place deep within your memory.
Xavier prompts a different question. “Have you been sleeping?”
And for the first time in a while, you finally speak.
“I’ve been dreaming a lot.”
First, about you. About us. About what could have been. About what never was.
“What about?” His voice holds something softer than you ever thought possible from him. Something reserved only for her, never for you.
It almost makes you break. To confess everything. To finally open up your heart and pour all your pain out. To free yourself from self-made shackles and unwanted thoughts. To hear the very softness you crave—to be held, caressed, embraced.
But you don’t. Because even with that unreadable look in his eye—the same eyes you’ve longed for all this time—you know what they hold.
For the first time in a while, Xavier looks at you—really looks at you. He’s known you all this time, the image of you ingrained in his brain like second nature. He knows you—you’re his oldest friend, most trusted companion. He's seen all sides of you, but the person he’s looking at looks nothing like the you he remembers.
He looks at you and can’t even recognise you. Cruelly, for a moment, he even wonders if it’s really you.
“I don’t see any changes.” Xavier takes a quick glance around; everything remains stagnant, as it always has.
You don’t correct him—not this time. You hum a noise between affirmation and acknowledgement and drift off to a place once forgotten.
Silence consumes the soul once again, with Xavier wondering when he had become so complacent with it all: with your constant presence, voice to fill the spaces he’s left behind, unrelenting energy, and unwavering spirit.
“You’re right. Nothing has changed.”
Xavier hasn’t visited since.
Not that you didn’t expect it.
You still see him at work, at lunch with MC, and on the rarest occasion, you bump into him in the hallway of your apartment complex—like strangers.
You do your best to find a new rhythm in this life, as your absence becomes more common and your presence goes with the echo of your voice. You’re seen less and less.
Maybe you were never seen at all—not truly.
You find that it’s easier to deal with heartache in the same way Xavier deals with everything: in silence.
Silence, although not foreign, not even new to you, seeks you out and sticks to you like a foreboding message.
You’ve spent years so bright, a will so strong it held on tight enough to kill you. Your loudness brought you here, away from Philos, so as the bits of your spirit whittle away along with your soul, silence is left to fill in the gaps of an empty shell.
You learn to live without Xavier in your life—as though he isn’t the last thing you have of your home, of the love you once felt, the comfort, the security. You learn to live without Xavier and learn to nurse a pain that has become something of a lover.
You had to learn to live because the world kept spinning—even when you’re lost in a place, unfamiliarly familiar, and can do nothing but live on.
But are you even living at this point? Even a dead girl walking has rights to a life—to living.
You’re leaving for another mission. In spite of Jenna’s protests, you’d rather fight to exhaustion—to blend the pain in your chest with the ache of muscles.
Your face reflects your volition. Eyes pulled down by the weight of your burden, face pale like a dying star. Despite trying, your smile doesn't quite reach your eyes, your laughter isn’t as bright, and your voice isn’t as loud.
You wait for Jenna’s reluctant orders. She’ll be damned if she lets you out on another solo mission—because despite your incredible hunting rates, you too are human.
A voice so familiar pulls your attention, and you look up to see Xavier standing before you—ice blonde hair and steel blue eyes in tow.
How long has he been standing there?
“Jenna assigned me as your partner for the mission.” Your face shows no expression—and not for lack of trying.
You laugh inwardly at the thought.
You're too much like him, in a sense. Loving hard enough to abandon your home, to follow blindly with fate—in spite of your own shortcomings. To silently love, quietly devote, and slowly disappear.
You purse your lips and let out a sigh too heavy for someone like you.
Xavier is almost taken by surprise.
“Let's go.” Xavier can hear it in your tone, and see it in your voice. How truly tired you really are—incomparable to his ever-waking sleepiness.
Your exhaustion runs you dry.
Again, silence befalls the two of you—an unwelcome rhythm that has found a place in the cracks of your relationship.
For the first time, Xavier trails behind you. Watching you. Observing you. And if he didn’t see your face or know your frame, he’d think the person walking in front of him was nothing but a stranger.
This time, Xavier walks in your shadow.
The remnants of who you once were have been whittled down to the bone. You’re broken—maybe you always have been. Maybe this was who you were always supposed to be.
You’re so tired, not just emotionally but physically too.
The never-ending stream of wanders is starting to take a toll, even on professionals such as you and Xavier.
Your sword is dull, chipped at the edges, and your wounds scatter across your frame, staining your skin in a dirty shade of red.
Even the almighty knight is struggling to keep up with the demand.
So, as you find refuge in a murky cave, to recuperate the best you can, you find that the full-body ache starts to return.
You lean against a well-placed boulder, breath shallow and your grip loose, as your eyes haze over the fire in front of you.
You feel the warmth reach out for you—gently, creeping through the shell of yourself.
It’s quiet, save for the crackle of the flame.
You feel peaceful for once—the hunt muddling your thoughts so much that you can’t even think straight. Or maybe it’s the exhaustion of not sleeping.
Despite it all, you feel a strange sense of tranquillity. One with the throb in your chest that makes it hard to breathe, but is easier to deal with now that everything aches.
It’s peaceful, you think, as you fade into whatever hole you’ve dug all those years ago. Your mind is muddled, and your soul flickers with the last bits of who you were.
Suddenly, you’re pulled back out—again by the very men who left you there, like a nostalgic toy forgotten all these years.
Your eyes pull away from the fire.
You soak in his gaze. It holds none of the same love you see him give out so freely to MC. It’s hard and stern—years of knighthood sewn into his features. He looks at you like he doesn’t know you at all.
Calloused hand gripping your shoulder—it’s firm enough to shift your attention, your body facing him.
You look at him and try to find the line between succour and obligation. Try to find one thing that says you mattered—even just for a second.
You were foolish to believe that you could remain just his friend, companion, comrade. You were stupid, dumb, idiotic.
You were completely blind to it all—to think that his love could have relieved something burning in you. Something insatiable. Something permanent.
“You’re drifting.” Xavier’s voice cuts through your messy thoughts and heavy heart.
You don’t make an attempt to joke like you used to—not even a weak smile. You sit back and stare at him like you don’t even know him.
“You’ve been doing that more often.” You take a moment to digest what he says—something he’s noticed entirely on his own, not by MC’s worrywart love.
Once upon a time, you would’ve thought it was normal for him to notice these types of things—the dullness of a close second. But now, you’re surprised. Shocked, even. Like he’s seeing you for the first time.
“Where are you going?” he prompts, and his voice holds something so intrinsic to the soul. Something you can’t find here. Something like home.
You’re fading, like the light of his evol—dimmer, as you’re pulled into the gravity of your own mind.
You’d like to tell him—if not as a lover, then a friend:
I’m lost. I’m gone. I’m tired. I’m sad. I’m furious. I’m not myself. Not with what’s left of who I am.
You don’t. Despite something inside you telling you you must. That it’s not worth dying on this hill.
You think: How much deeper of a hole can you dig before you vanish? Before you're gone? Forgotten? Never having existed in the first place.
Until you’re not a person, but a memory.
You don’t tell him anything, because that’s not the kind of relationship you have—not anymore.
In the midst of the silence, your voice finally breaks through.
Quiet. Cracked. Almost gone.
“I’m thinking of going home.” There’s finality in your tone. Weak as your voice may be, Xavier hasn’t heard such certainty from you in months.
His eyes knit in confusion, contort in concern.
Maybe you’re just tired. But there’s something to your expression—an unspeakable hollowness that wasn’t there before. Your eyes haze over with something distant.
Like he always does, he remains silent. Never reaching out. He’s seen you get through worse, come back stronger. He’s seen everything. He knows you.
All the years of companionship will amount to something. It has to. He’s known you for so long. You stuck by his side even through death. You truly were the one stable thing in his life. Never needing to chase—always there, beside him. With him.
It was always you and him—even as he fights his way through the forgotten memories of MC, you remain.
Though, something claws at him, as his hand gently travels down your arm. To reach. To ask what you meant. To wonder if you meant the apartment beside his, where it reflected the culture of Philos, somehow capturing the stars in every object you bought.
He wants to ask if home is with him.
Silence is there to greet him again—him only, he thinks, because you seem so used to it now.
His eyes travel to his hand on yours, afraid to let go for some reason. As if letting go meant never seeing you again.
Your head is slumped motionless against his shoulder. His eyes peer onto your back—and then he sees it.
The blood stains the rock behind you. Your back is adorned with gashes that soak your uniform.
“Y/N,” he calls out, like it’s the only thing he knows. Because it’s the only thing he can do.
He hears no response. Not even a whisper of a shallow breath.
It’s not quiet. Not even small.
Then he feels it. The way your eyes droop down to the fire. The limpness of your hand on his. The paleness. The coldness.
His spare hand reaches out.
He shakes you. “Don’t close your eyes.”
But you don’t abide—swaying with the motion of his force.
You could do anything. Do everything. Move mountains. Slay beasts. You were strong. Firm. Confident. He knew you could get through anything.
“Come on, just open your eyes. Can’t you do that?”
“One breath. That’s all I need.”
Xavier cradles your gaunt body as he pulls your head taut to his shoulder. He rocks you like a sleeping child, holding you tight—tighter than he ever has before.
He’s shaking—and not from the cold.
He doesn’t know what comes over him, but suddenly, the silence breaks.
And he hears everything. Sees everything. Feels everything.
Because that’s all he can do.
Xavier likes to think that he notices your absence.
The way people step over the shells of your name, the routes taken to avoid the common spaces you once occupied in the living. The untouched work desk, memorialised by those who remembered her. The vacancy next door — the home she built away from home — now barren, her things sold, thrown away, or forgotten.
MC, who was so loud with her affection, mourned just as passionately. Her heart sewn onto her sleeve as she cried the loss of a friend. Flowers tended on the desk of a fallen soldier, and distance built from the apartment upstairs.
The way you’ve faded so naturally out of his life — never moving, never reaching. The walk to and from home is the same. His apartment is the same. His life remains the same. Like you were never there. Like the image of your smile wasn’t something that pushed him through distant times.
Like you never meant anything to him.
Like the years of friendship, companionship, camaraderie — all amounted to a tombstone with your name etched into it.
And he hates himself for it.
For being so complacent. For never seeing you. Never hearing you. Never reaching out. For always thinking you’d remain the same: the loyal, competent pillar in his life. For thinking that his silence meant nothing to you.
Because it did. It meant everything.
He hates how he’s living life like he always did — like you weren’t ever part of him. Regret, guilt, grief — they all settle in his bones, for a person he can’t even remember.
Along with the memory of you, time passed, as it always does. And as time passed, he slowly forgot.
Your goals and aspirations.
Your loves, your hates.
He can barely remember your face. The last time you laughed. Your smile.
He can barely remember you at all.
Only pulled in by the gravity of his grief, where he finds you at the centre of it all.
To think he was so far from you. The irony now is that he can’t ever leave.
Stuck on a cursed image of a woman who meant so much to him.
Who held the moon up so he could shine with the stars.
He sits on his bed, light voided from the room. The pictures from your apartment piled by his bedside, facing the stars, watching — as you always did.
For the first time, he’s not tired at all.
Is this how you felt? How restless you were?
When he showed up that time, too worried about MC and her anxieties. Too quick to solve her issues that he hadn’t noticed how your eye bags sank deep enough to stain your spirit. How you lay, lost, drifting to a place he couldn’t reach.
And just like his home, his culture, his people — you too join the faint memory of Philos.
His phone buzzes, bright. The screen illuminates the room.
Xavier thinks it’s MC again — she doesn’t know the depth of what you and Xavier shared, but she understood the weight of long-term partnership.
At first, he answered every time — to relieve her worries, to silently say he was fine.
But now, everything feels like a farce.
A lie he tells himself as much as he tells the world.
If the absence, the silence, isn’t acknowledged — maybe it’ll keep things still. To stop time from moving.
Because if time doesn’t move, then the memory of you won’t fade.
He picks up the phone and waits.
Then he hears it — the soft laughter he longed for. It’s gentle and hearty, so full of life.
Xavier peels the phone from his ear to peer at the screen.
Then he sees it. The light. The brightness of a smile lost to memory, now alone. It’s displayed in front of him — teeth bared, lips stretched wide with a feeling he hasn’t seen in years.
Laughing so freely. Smiling so widely.
Xavier scrambles upright, leaning forward to see the screen more clearly.
It’s you — in clothes he’s never seen you wear, in a room he’s never seen before, with a face he barely remembers.
How could he ever forget? Not truly.
So desperately, he calls out. Announcing himself, finally reaching out.
Your eyes perk in surprise as you lean in.
“Holy shit, did he just say my name? That’s crazy!” you giggle, and Xavier is too overcome with emotion to even question the absurdity of your words.
“No wonder people were glazing this game on Twitter!” you laugh before the call cuts.
Xavier’s too stunned to react. He taps rapidly through his phone to check the caller history.
He scrambles to call again.
Anticipation sweating off of him.
He holds his phone tightly and then— You pick up.
“Damn, I didn’t even level his affinity up yet and he’s calling already,” you mutter, peering at the screen.
Xavier looks dishevelled, almost destroyed. His hair is a messy heap, and dark circles shadow his eyes. The usual soft glow of his skin— dulled, lifeless.
He’s worn thin. A dead man walking.
“Hey,” Xavier says softly, almost inaudibly.
He watches your face shift — confusion to elation.
“Oh my god, you can even talk! Let me try again.”
And then you speak — not offhand commentary, but to him.
“Hi,” you greet, brightly enough to light up the room.
Xavier is at a loss, and doesn’t reply. But unlike before, you speak again.
“This is so cool. So like, does this count as my daily interaction?” you ask aloud, maybe to yourself, maybe to him— he can’t tell.
“Right, probably not in his programming to answer questions like that,” you mumble, before turning your full attention back to him.
“I’ll see you soon, alright? I hope this mechanic isn’t a glitch.” You grin softly.
And nothing in Xavier’s entire career could’ve prepared him for this.
But he’s not letting this opportunity go. Not when he has another chance to hear you, to see you — and even if he can’t touch you, he’ll never let go.
He’s not letting you slip.
Not now. Not ever. Not again.
“All right... I’ll see you soon,” Xavier replies simply.
Watching your face glow is enough for him.
The way your lips stretch, teeth bare — a face full of life.
Here, he decides: he’ll wait as long as you need.
He’ll wait until the phone screen glows once again.
He’ll wait to see you again.
Close enough to hear you. To see you. But never touch you.
The unfair proximity of a dream
