Summary: During the worst time possible, Ardbert decides to take advantage of the fact that nobody else but you can see him, hear him, or touch him—or more accurately, that he can touch you.
There comes a time in any fighter’s life when, if only a little, they might start having regrets about some of the things they’ve done—actions taken, people missed, those kinds of thing. You as the warrior of light are still no exception to this, though the things you tend to regret don’t often seem like things a person would dwell on; you regret helping with that godsdamn banquet, for one, and… well, you don’t regret meeting Ardbert, but there are a times when he makes you wonder if you should.
Though he is still a shade in all manners of conventional meaning, Ardbert and you have found a semblance of peace between the two of you now that you technically share the selfsame body—a consequence of what he did to help you defeat Hades, assuredly, and not an action you would ever wish away. But being the only creature who can see him coupled with the fact that you’re the only person he can touch and be touched by, it…leads to some unscrupulous activities.
It’s just past the eve of battle. A mission had tasked you to the cold climes of Ishgard where it seemed that several rogue spellcasters and ex-knights had banded together to try and summon voidsent to claim the countryside. It didn’t work, obviously, and while they could have simply left the job to several of Ishgard’s finer knights or perhaps to Estinien himself, you had enjoyed the opportunity to see old friends.
If only someone would have told you about the ceremony for the completion of the firmament.
Not that it was much of a surprise—you had lent you hand in some of the procuring and refinement of the supplies for the new housing wards—but you never expected to be plucked out individually to take part. Thank the gods above that Aymeric hadn’t forced you to stand on the stage above the crowd, to give a speech or thensome. You weren’t terribly great with words, and are certain that your current predicament would have been worse tenfold.
“Quite the spectacle,” a low voice hums from just behind your ear. The sound might have been a surprise if his hands weren’t already stroking along your body, inethreal hands easily skimming below the layers of your armor and clothes as if they were illusions. “I remember being part of some. Saving a village or fending off a group of thieves—when we started taking on harder jobs, the fanfare was… frightening, honestly.”
“Not a fan of crowds?” Your whisper in reply is so soft and careful. Though there are a number of people around all paying more attention to Aymeric than you, the last thing you need is for someone to hear you apparently talking to yourself.
“Yes and no,” Ardbert continues, sweeping his fingertips up the sides of your body, and then to the gentle swell of your breasts. They are bare to his touch, which in itself is eager to explore and peruse. He pinched one nipple between a forefinger and thumb—and you are forced to swallow the gasp that nearly falls from open lips. “But I have to say I’m quite fond of them right now.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Unfortunately I don’t think that’s possible anymore,” Ardbert huffs amusedly, then pinches your other nipple with unrelenting eagerness. Rolls them both between leather-covered fingertips until they’re brought to a pert hardness. “And you once said we can try to make the most of this, correct? Eager to change your mind on that?”
You want to bite his words, to shift your body away from his touch… but you also don’t want him to stop. Be it from a combination of touch and the rumbling timbre of his voice or simply one or the other, there’s no denying the blossom of heat between your legs. The shade smiles in a kiss against the side of your neck, hands completely busied in toying with your breasts in ways that make your nerves buzz and shiver. So instead you simply let his touch continue unabated, until your nipples are sore and aching, until your legs feel like jelly and your heart is lifting itself right out of your chest with how quickly it beats.
“B-bastard…!” You hiss.
“I’ll have you know my parents were happily wed.” Ardbert presses another careful kiss to your throat. At this, his hands move, sweeping the warm planes of his open palms across your abused nipples—pleasure and pain fill you in equal amounts, as if your skin isn’t quite sure how to register it anymore.
He’s pressed up against your back, eager to feel you but still with a semblance of care to how your body moves to balance with his—you are, after all, still very much in view of half the people of Ishgard. Though Aymeric seems to have moved onto letting the others in charge of the reconstruction say their various parts (and all to a bustling crowd) you still can’t help feeling watched. Eyes, hard upon you, curious and cautious and—
That’s when out of the corner of the stage your gaze finally catches onto the familiar shape of dragoon armor. Estinien is barely visible beyond all the decorations and stone pillars, but he’s still discernibly there. For security or simply to witness the event, it doesn’t much matter the reason when he’s yet watching you all the same with that sharp focus and brooding state of his all the same.
Your eyes catch his. He raises an eyebrow. You hope to all the gods above that he hadn’t caught a moment of broken composure from you, else you’d have to either avoid the man for an entire season; otherwise, you’ll have to come up with a reason why it looked like you were getting sexually accosted by unseen forces during arguably one of Ishgard’s most important commemorations to date.
Desperately trying to seem casual, you lift a hand up and wave it in his direction with a smile poised ever so perfectly upon your lips. Even as Ardbert sighs in your ear and gropes at your chest with an almost boyish eagerness, years of battle-hardened constitution wins out long enough that your expression holds out until Estinien finally glances away from you. Whether content in your facade or simply deciding it wasn’t his place to press, you’re grateful all the same. The same can’t sense of contentment can’t be used to describe the shade who so needily kneads at your chest.
“So it seems the warrior of light can keep a steady composure in the face of pleasure and pain alike,” he murmurs, lips brushing against the sensitive skin of your neck. If you didn’t know any better in the moment, you might even call his tone a tad possessive. “But we both know how much you adore having your nipples toyed with, yeah?”
“Don’t act like you’re not the one who has a thing for-“
And just to prove something of a point, he suddenly pinches them in a rough and quick motion—so much that the softest noise of shock and pleasure slip past your tongue. Though it is easy enough to hide behind a sudden cough, you can’t help but fear that someone nearby is going to catch on. Even if the layers of your outfit cover up the way Ardbert is all but torturing your chest, the same can’t be said about your knees as they threaten to knock together, or the building heat between your thighs.
Satisfied with the reaction, Ardbert continues, “Do you think I could make you climax right here?”
It’s as much threat as it is a question of permission.
Though the word ‘no’ would be simple and easy to say, even in your current state, it never reaches your tongue. Instead you risk a moment of selfish sentiment and reach a hand up towards your chest. To an unwary onlooker it would seem as if you’re lifting a hand up to toy with a piece of your armor—but your fingertips graze across Ardbert’s knuckles, pressing his touch ever so against your skin. He sighs in satisfaction—more from the subtle consent than the actual contact—and becomes ever more forceful in his ministrations. He rolls and pinches your hard nipples between his fingers with the same fervent passion as he would touch the rest of your body. The pleasure seems to connect all the way down your chest, belly, and straight between your legs. It’s a tension all of its own right, a pleasure quite like and unlike when he has his hand between your thighs.
“Almost a shame that there’s a crowd,” Ardbert growls, voice low enough that each word is a rumbling of syllables than anything else. Or perhaps your mind is barely able to comprehend them as more than that. “I don’t get to hear all those pretty sounds you make when you cum. But I can still feel you trembling. The powerful warrior of light—even the warrior of darkness—made to shake like a leaf while I play with your nipples ‘till they’re sore. Hopefully that dragoon friend of yours won’t notice at all.”
It’s hard to think. Hard to even breathe. All your mind can focus on is how eager Ardbert’s hands are upon you, pulling and tugging and twisting—you realize all too suddenly that you can cum like this. Your legs would be shaking if it weren’t for your incredible force of will, and that’s nothing compared to the fire rolling in the pit of your belly. By the touch of his hands and the growing sense of debauchery in Ardbert’s voice, you feel it creep closer. The edge. Pleasure wells up in your veins as each word and motion seems to push you closer to it. The world around you has become little more than a muffled layer of noise and shapes settled just beyond Ardbert’s presence.
And then it all comes crashing down. Head over heel over the edge of pleasure’s precipice. It’s sharp and hot and tight and nearly overwhelming as it crashes across your body starting from your belly and echoing out, all the way to your fingertips and toes—but especially where the man’s fingertips continue to tease and torture the hard buds between them. All that escapes from your lips is a shaking sigh, but he is standing close enough to be nearly against your body, and thus he feels the gentle trembles that slide down your spine when sweet orgasm seeps through your bones.
“Gods above,” he murmurs, pulling his touch so that his hands are skimming up and down your sides again. “If I were a weak man, I’d have you on the ground and myself betwixt your legs after a little show like that.”
The words are sweet and taunting, but you scarcely have the energy to come up with a retort, and especially not one quiet enough that half of the crowd wouldn’t hear—it’s hard enough to control your sudden need for air. But Ardbert doesn’t chase the topic or try to continue teasing you; instead he merely settles his palms over your hips, keeping you steady even when your legs feel as if they want to give out.
Luckiliy enough, the ceremony only lasted another quarter-bell.
Summary: In which the you, the Warrior of Light and a bard, compose Tomorrow and Tomorrow after the events of Shadowbringers. You're having a hard time finishing the piece, but an unexpected (but not unwelcome) visitor shows up and becomes and equally unexpected muse for your soul.
-
It’s a familiar sight, one that you keenly remember seeing since childhood. There is nothing particularly special about it in form nor function, but yet it is arguably the most beautiful sight that you can distantly recall seeing in quite a long time.
The sun, setting off in the distance, slowly falling to the western horizon far beyond the hills of Lakeland. You watch the scene in gentle awe, letting it wash over you in a sublime sort of wonder that is difficult to explain in words alone. There is truly nothing special about it in regards to how sunsets normally go, but you feel especially taken by the fading glow in the sky, shifting into the warm spectrum of red and orange that overtakes the entire sky.
Perhaps the sight is ever more wondrous because you know the pains it took to make it so. The pain, the effort, the sacrifices made just so you can gaze your eyes out over the fading light, content in the knowledge that the sky would soon embrace the world below with moon and starlight, the latter as numerous as the lives spent in trying to regain such a simple gift that forces had stolen away and threatened to swallow the world in misery and suffering.
Or perhaps still it's because you have learned to appreciate it. It hadn’t taken very long after your arrival upon the First for your body and mind to find such everlasting light stressful and anxious. When you would fall asleep and wake yet under the scorching, unnatural brightness of the sky above, such wonder befell upon you for what it must have been like for the multitudes of other people living in the First to endure it for over a century.
Regardless, you were not one to ignore such beauty even if you couldn’t understand the reason for it; such was the nature of many things in the world, and you often had too many other issues to spend your thoughts on than of the natural mysteries of nature itself. Perhaps one day you will be able to make right on your words with the Exarch, of taking a well-deserved rest when the world was not beneath the shadows of those who would do her harm, but that day was not on the horizon just yet.
Until then, the sunset was a fitting, beautiful substitute to fill the expanse of your wandering thoughts for the evening. As the sun fell into the gentle embrace of the earth beneath it, and the sky began to fade from a brilliant fire and into a subdued indigo, you found a place upon the window sill with instrument in-hand.
And, as darkness gradually filled the sky above your head, so too did inspiration come into your heart, and then words upon your lips.
-
“For whom weeps the storm
Her tears on our skin
The days of our years gone
Our souls soaked in sin
These memories ache with the weight of tomorrow.”
Haunting. Aching. The words fill the air of the Pendants halls like an invisible smoke, dancing alongside the occasional pluck or strum of an instrument that one couldn’t be bothered to identify.
It seeps into bones and hearts, carrying both hope and regret alike as it wavers from soft whisper into a powerful echo, until once more it grows soft upon a critical pair of lips, a tongue that tries to weave emotion into words.
“From those who've fallen to those who arise
A prayer to keep us ever by your side
An undying promise that we just might
Carry on
In a song.”
The moonlight falls into your open window as you feel the echoes of the words fade away into silence. Something about them feels right, but yet there still feels to be something missing from the piece, something you can’t quite capture yet even though you feel the muse of night itself an eternity above your eyes. Even as you stare out into the endless expanse of stars, nothing can quite make the connection with the burning fire in your chest.
Fingers absentmindedly strum over the lyre in your hands, finding pleasure in the soft noise of each individual string coming together in simple chords, and then once more into the soft melody you’d long-since devised for the song before the words had started weaving themselves into your dreams.
“ These memories ache with the weight of tomorrow… ” your lips mumble the whisper of a verse, just barely loud enough to hold a tune. Like many of the songs you’d composed in the time since you’d joined the Scions, since you’d become the Warrior of Light, it feels natural to craft songs from your efforts and sacrifices. Of experiences made. Of friends found and lost.
Though you had started the efforts as simply a way to soothe the ache of the world constantly weighing upon your shoulders, the music had quickly become a way to preserve everything that you continue to fight for.
For friends. For enemies. For battles fought and won, battles fought and lost . For every single day that you’d agonized over your worth in being the Warrior of Light--and soon the Warrior of Darkness--music was a way to keep it all immortalized in a way that would outlive you, and perhaps still even outlive your own legacy that would surely come to pass when people remembered your efforts and skill than you as a person.
Bittersweetness gripped your heart as you repeated a line, and then another, wanting for it all to come together. Waiting. Your fingers touch upon the strings, and your lungs fill with air, but there’s… nothing.
And that frustrates you more than anything else. Your mind can recall the names and faces of so many people, so many lives that had lived and died, and yet your heart can’t find the muse enough to offer them worthwhile words for their sacrifice towards the safety of their home.
“I didn’t take you for the singing sort.”
The voice sounds sharp, cutting through the thick tension of the moment between your mind and body, fingers and strings. Surprise enough, at least, that your head jerks around to find a second presence standing in the center of your room. A familiar presence, but a surprising one nonetheless.
“And I thought you promised to warn me before you made an abrupt entrance into my room.”
Ardbert offers but a half-cocked smile and a shrug of his shoulders, confident enough that your annoyance wouldn’t last very long in him.
And he would be correct.
“It’s hardly as if I can offer a knock,” he says, glancing once to the door behind him before approaching the window sill upon which you sat. “And you can’t blame a man for curiosity; I could nearly hear you from the front desk.”
Tension fades away from our lips as the shade moves to sit beside you, fortunate enough that he is able to actually sit upon the sill than fall through it like his body does most other objects.
“And what were you doing all the way down there?” the question is equal parts amused and curious. Fingers strum over the taut strings of the instrument in your hands, filling the air with a soft chorus of noise.
Ardbert offers another shrug, which you catch out the corner of your eyes.
“People-watching, mostly. Little else that you can do when your options to interact with the world are rather limited.”
Your lips part to say something, but the words are quickly stilled between them when you realize how miserable they would sound, a man so lonely that he could not speak or even touch another person but yourself. Even you can’t twist his perception of the world into something humorous, morbid or otherwise, so you shut the attempt down completely in favor of strumming the lyre once more in an experimental chord.
Ardbert hums, and it takes a moment for you to realize that he’s trying to mimic one of the notes in the chord. But when you turn your face to ask about it, the specter of a man has already beat you, peddled back to the topic you are about to leave behind as an unspoken pain.
“They’re happier, you know.”
You blink.
“What?”
“The people of the Crystarium.”
Ardbert lets out a long sigh, a chest full of air that he breathes out from between softly parted lips, eyes closed in the moment as he gathers up his thoughts and words alike. His shoulders brush lightly against yours as the two of you sit close, closer than what would have been appropriate. You feel like it’s on purpose, given that the man seems lacking in some of the outer layers of his armor, in just enough to call him as casually dressed as you are.
You don’t say anything about it. His presence is comforting.
“You should hear some of the things that they say about you. Rumors and hearsay is already turning into tales and bedtime stories, y’know.”
Ardbert leans against you. Knowing that there was no other person that he could share such connections with, a fair bit literally speaking, it means more than but a simple brush of shoulders and catch of glances.
And his words fill your heart with something warm and unexplainable. Like the very sunset your eyes had caught but a short time before, the emotion is sublime and without words to give it proper description. Put to the barest of forms, you feel happy. Happy in knowing your efforts have impact, a genuinely positive impact upon the world around you. Of knowing the sacrifices of the lives before you had meaning, that future generations would be able to appreciate the world without fear of sin-eaters and lighwardens alike.
Knowing that you had done good.
Whether he is aware of the effect of his words upon you, Ardbert eventually lets out a chuckle, kicking out his legs and leaning back to more properly appreciate the dark-enveloped sky above your heads.
“After seeing you take down all of the lightwardens, I’m surprised to know you’re so skilled in crafting a tune. Full of surprises are you, Warrior of Light?”
Another pluck of a string, another brush of shoulders, another warm twist around your heart.
The edges of your lips quirk up as one chord fades into another, and then another still.
“Do you think my extraneous skills silly, Ardbert?”
“Hardly,” he says quickly, gesturing with a hand of his sincerity in it. “I simply could never find the time or talent to do much with music myself. I tried a few times, but I found I was far more apt with the steel of an axe than the wood of a lyre.”
His hand settles back between the two of you, close enough that you yourself could reach down and cover it in one of your own. Somehow, you know that Ardbert is equally aware of this fact, and makes no effort to move it away.
Ardbert clears his throat after a moment, “But, going back to before.” He shifts a little, decidedly closer to you. “I did hear your singing, but I don’t believe I got to hear the end of the song.”
“That’s because it’s not complete yet.”
“Ah,” the man takes a beat, filtering the words before realization and hindsight seems to move through him. “Did I interrupt you? I can leave if you would like; there was a rather interesting debate going on in the Cabinet of Curiosity I was eavesdropping on if you’d rather for me to leave-”
“No!”
For once since you’d put your hands on the lyre at the set of the sun, one of your hands tears away from it’s familiar shape to instinctively reach out and grab the hand sitting between your bodies. Fingers lightly entwined, skin warm despite the layers of cloth and the incorporeal state of Ardbert’s form.
And he stops.
In fact, the whole world stops. It freezes in the moment, leaving you with your eyes looking towards his own, your expression equally surprised and vulnerable from an outburst that had spontaneously erupted from your lips before you could stop it.
But then the seconds start to tick by once more, and your heart beating in your chest, though perhaps a little faster than before.
“You don’t need to leave,” the whisper falls gently from your lips. “I… like it when you’re here.”
Ardbert watches you for a few moments, and wordlessly nods his head in silent understanding. He doesn’t pull his hand away from yours, and instead the touch lingers on until you find the strength to take in a deep breath and slowly pull your hand back to the shape of the instrument in your lap. Though you can almost feel the remnants of the last chord struck over the strings, the air feels so still and silent.
Empty. It seems to cry out for noise, for sound,
For music .
Though your eyes linger upon Ardbert’s face for a few moments longer, something begins to work through your fingertips. A feeling. A memory. It sinks deep into the fabric of your very being as your mind ponders harder on what it truly is that starts to curl around your inner self. Though it was a feeling that you’d experienced dozens, perhaps hundreds of times before, there is something so abrupt and new about it, about how it seems to swirl inside your heart and within the soft gaze of Ardbert’s eyes, that it takes you the span of several heartbeats to realize it.
A muse. An inspiration. A voice filled with words, the very words you’ve been searching for. Aching to be free, to be heard, experienced by all who would listen to them.
The missing piece to the song.
One note fades into a second, and then a third. Soon, the chords start to fill the air, abuzz with the familiar tune of the song you’d been crafting for weeks since the fall of the ascian who seemed both beginning and end of the tragedy fallen upon the First.
“Stand tall my friend
May all of the dark lost inside you find light again
In time tumbling turning we seek amends
Eternal winds to the land descend
Our journey will never end
From those who've fallen to those who arise
A prayer to keep us ever by your side
An undying promise that we just might
Carry on
In a song.”
There is no true way to describe the feeling which floods your soul, seeping into every crack and crevice of who you are. As if your being has been dunked in ice water, with only the shock as inspiration and the cold as meaning, leaving you shaking with the raw energy and beauty of the world humming around you.
You can recall, through song, the feeling of your struggles within the First. Of the pain, the sacrifice, the hope that filled every action and word, even when everything seemed daunting and endless. You remember every step taken, every face and name memorized, every single person and life that played a part into the very night sky you sit below.
More than just the warrior of light or darkness, you are a beacon, a keeper of experiences and stories--stories beyond your own. You have the weight of the world upon your shoulders, yes, but moreso than that the weight of the people who live upon it.
“Pray don't forget us
Your bygone kin
With one world's end
Does a new begin
And should our souls scatter
Unto the wind
Still we shall live on
Stand tall my friend
May all of the dark deep inside you find light again
This time tumbling turning we make amends
Eternal winds from the land ascend
Here to lift us
Then we won't end.”
By the time the last word has left your mouth and faded into the night air beyond your window, all has turned still and peaceful. You feel a sense of completion in it, the pieces finally fitting together as they had always meant to be. A lost puzzle finally come together, a mystery at last uncovered. The energy of the music buzzes yet at your fingertips, but even through your racing heart and blood pounding in your ears, you can hear and feel the appreciation from your window-side companion.
“Beautiful.”
It sends your soul abound to hear such a simple, single word. You’re not a stranger to the compliments of your musical talents, but it’s the first time in recollection that it has ever meant so much . To hear the word come from the very being who finally connected the dots and broken down the wall of artist’s block, to sow the last seeds of a song that would hopefully outlive yourself and inspire future generations to defend what they hold dear.
Your eyes blink for a time, before the world seems to come back into place. Until colors and shapes have meaning again, and you realize that you’d been crying. Tears obscure most of your vision, but it clears once you reach a hand up towards your face-
But it is Ardbert’s thumbs that brush them from your cheeks.
Warm. Gentle. Soothing.
The world clears at last, yet the tears continue to well and fall from your eyes like a gentle river of emotion you can’t control. It’s far from a shock to come out of a music-driven trance to find yourself in such a state, but it’s the rawest that you’ve ever felt in a long time. Not since Ishgard. Since the last time you’d lost someone so dear that it took months for you to find the inkling of a muse again, inspired only by the realization that you could keep him alive in the spirit of your music.
It’s a lot of emotions that run without restriction, though they are the very same emotions that gave birth to the haunting words that had fallen from your lips but moments prior.
Giving into the touch, you gently press your face into the specter’s physical touch, and reach a hand up to make sure that it doesn’t leave if he has a sudden flicker of insecurity or embarrassment in its intimacy.
Eventually, the man speaks.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “For… letting me listen to that. To you.” His words are so soft, like the touch of his palms and fingers cupping either side of your face which anchor you to the earth in an ironic twist of reality, given that he himself was anchored to the very same world by you.
Words, at least the speaking sort, are still rather difficult to get ahold of. You simply nod in response, lips trembling into something of a smile. You don’t have even the time to try and force yourself to speak before you’re enveloped at last in the man’s arms, held tight against his body in a gesture of warmth and unlabeled intimacy that it acts much like a salve over the vulnerable ache of your raw psyche.
There is a time and a place to write the finished piece down upon paper.
But right now, with the night sky and glittering stars above your head, with the music of fallen friends and foes alike still shaking within your soul, you are content to remain safe and warm within the loving embrace of Ardbert’s arms.
