A while back i got to see a friend play the Dead by Daylight dating sim and it made me yearn for a RE8 4 Lords dating sim. So POV you're about to go on a date with Alcina Dimitrescu
For the FF14 write wequest !! Missed, Forgotten , Friendship. Early days , Alisaie struggling with her new reality without her friend WoL and finding comfort and purpose with Tesleen.
Bless you this was a beautiful excuse for an outpouring of Alisaie-related emotions. Generic female WoL. Mild spoilers thru the very beginning of Shadowbringers.
Currently accepting FFXIV prompts/requests because I haven’t written in forever and FFXIV is all my last remaining brain cell cares about currently!
--
Before Alisaie has fully come to her senses, she’s hit in the face with something soft. Her eyes sting with unshed tears, and she feels as though she’s been cut off mid-sentence, though she cannot remember what she was saying. Distantly, she thinks she hears an unfamiliar voice saying something, distressed and almost angry, but the words come as though she is underwater.
Before anything else, she realizes that she is cold. She presses her hands against a floor like marble and realizes that she is naked, and that the something soft that hit her is a caster’s robe, made for someone much larger. She puts it on, anyway.
The next thing she notices is a hooded figure standing across the room from her, turned away and making a fist against the wall. The room reminds her of the observatory at the Studium—it’s got the look of a place meant for studying stars and distant planets.
“I am truly sorry,” says the hooded figure softly.
Slowly, insidiously, the memories return. “You did this?” Alisaie demands, standing on shaking legs.
She’ll kill him. As she gains her footing, she can see that he is not a large man, and he wields a mage’s staff. She can overpower him before he—
She reaches for her rapier and falters.
--
She doesn’t kill or even maim the Crystal Exarch. Perhaps it’s because he graciously provides her with a replacement weapon, or perhaps it’s because he is so eager to aid her in reuniting with her brother. Perhaps it’s because sometimes, he almost seems like he would welcome some sort of retribution, for crimes far beyond the scope of a well-intentioned accident.
Perhaps it’s because Alisaie would be a rather magnificent liar if she were to say she does not hope he succeeds in summoning the Warrior of Light here.
If she were here, everything would be all right. It always is. It always was.
Alisaie doesn’t kill the Crystal Exarch, but she will if she has to stand around day in and day out watching him pore over books and letters and stare off into space contemplating the theory of magic, or whatever else he does between failed summonings.
She finds plenty to kill in what remains of Ahm Araeng. For awhile, it’s all she does, all she thinks about. She throws herself into the art of killing as much and as quickly as she can with all the single-minded focus of a scholar, and she becomes quite good at it.
She’d like to say she’s fighting to protect the people of this world. She’d like to pretend she’s preparing for the future, that one day the Warrior of Light will return and oh, won’t she be impressed by how much Alisaie has improved? Surely then she’ll know she can always count on Alisaie to stand by her side, no matter what perils they may encounter.
She would like to believe in these happy and hopeful thoughts, but they are lies. Alisaie doesn’t care for the people of this world, and she does not think of the future. Alisaie cannot even imagine a future that holds anything worth thinking about. She sleeps when what passes for her body is well beyond exhaustion and wakes when she cannot sleep any longer, and then she fights and she kills, and she becomes quite good at it. There is nothing else left for her.
--
Alphinaud writes her to gently suggest that she consider selling her services as a guard, rather than a mere kill-for-hire, and it’s the only time she can remember when one of his suggestions hasn’t made her want to hunt him down just to slap him. A simple change of title will afford her better accommodations, after all, and better access to information regarding goings-on that have nothing to do with what needs butchering that particular day.
She makes her way to the Infirmary, only distantly aware that she’s been avoiding it, and she strides up to a young woman tending a cooking pot without taking in much of anything around her.
“Hello,” she begins, unfeeling and unseeing. “I wondered if you might have need of a guard.”
The woman looks up from her cooking pot, bright green eyes and a smile that is surprisingly warm, and Alisaie feels her heart stutter. How long since anyone has looked upon her with--well, with any warmth at all?
“I recognize you,” says the woman. “People in town say you’re a force of nature.” She points with her spoon to the rapier at Alisaie’s hip. “It’s some kind of magic-sword hybrid, right? I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Nervous laughter bubbles up inside her lungs, and Alisaie averts her gaze, dizzy and overwarm beneath the glow of such undivided attention. No one looks at her here. Not unless they’re poised to attack.
“I’m afraid we don’t have much to spare,” the woman continues. “Will food and lodging do for now?”
Alisaie has half a mind to turn and run without another word, without another thought. She feels as though she might weep, suddenly and horribly, for all she has lost and forgotten, buried underneath a rage bright and unforgiving as these burning skies. She cannot bear to look up again, knows the mere sight of a friendly face will reduce her to senseless hysterics. “Yes,” she says quietly.
“Wonderful!” says the woman. “You’re just in time, actually. The stew is ready! Won’t you have a seat?”
Alisaie obeys, eyes downcast, and accepts her stew with a silent nod. For all the time she’s been here, never has she felt more like a spirit cut adrift from her body.
--
Alisaie spends the next several days almost consistently teary-eyed, a circumstance as wholly unwelcome as it is uncommon for her. Alisaie Leveilleur does not mope, and she certainly does not mope for days on end.
Tesleen, the woman who runs the Infirmary, is, mercifully, insightful enough to put it into words. “It must have been hard, being out there all on your own,” she says, kindly, but without pity. “Sometimes you can’t let yourself feel things ‘til you know it’s safe, right?” she taps her fingers against her chest, over her heart, then hands Alisaie a bowl of stew. “I’d say it’s a good thing, wouldn’t you? That you’re feeling a little bit safer?”
Alisaie scrubs at her eyes with her sleeve and bows her head lower, nodding silently. Tesleen sits next to her and puts an arm around her shoulders, and, for perhaps the first time since she was an infant, Alisaie cries, hard.
Every time she thinks she has never been more alone, the universe finds a way to prove her wrong. She dares not even give voice to the thought, for she can imagine how it will go.
You’re not alone anymore, Tesleen will say, and like an idiot, Alisaie will believe her. Maybe she’ll do what she did to the gods-damned Warrior of Light and beg like a foolish child not to be abandoned.
And then, not a moment later, some horrible thing will come and take her away, too.
So Alisaie doesn’t put voice to her thoughts, but allows herself to be held until she calms down. In a way, the words don’t really need to be spoken. The stew is warm and filling, and no one here will pay undue attention to someone who is overcome by grief, and Tesleen gives Alisaie’s shoulders one more gentle squeeze before she stands and goes on about her business.
The words don’t need to be spoken, because now Alisaie feels less alone. She can fend off sin eaters for these people who need that from her. Her brother and the other Scions, while not exactly easy to reach, are more or less safe, and they are here if she really needs them.
Still…
By the Twelve, how she wishes the Warrior of Light were here. If she were here, everything would be all right. It always is.
