[ alphinaud/wol ] ★ [ 1,386 words ] ★ [ some time in shb ]
illya skawi & alphinaud leveilleur with heavy mentions of fray / dark illya. the other scions are there in the background too. warning for some talks about self harm and of course, lots of depression. this is illya we’re talking about here.
the first step in coming to terms with yourself is the unconditional support of the one you love most.
The eclipse is unsightly against the bright, radiant backdrop of everlasting light, dark, distant and uncaring as the moon as it seeks to engulf the sky in cold darkness. But that was what Norvrandt needed - what the people deserved... a Warrior of Darkness that could bring them the beauty of stars and cold midnight air back into their lives.
They needed a hero - as the people of Eorzea did - a hero that was dark but not evil, a sinner who was rebellious but not malicious. And a savior who was strong, valiant, and ready to bear the torch that was the people’s wishes upon her own two shoulders.
She didn’t fit the mold at all, at least not in her own eyes.. And with every swing of her great sword, and the howling of the pitch in her soul as an unforgiven sorrow within herself constantly fought to burst out, she felt the weight of her responsibilities, the pain of unresolved hurt and years of nonexistent self-esteem begin to take its toll upon her frail, battered body and mind. Not that she was ever perfectly intact in the first place.
She hated for them to see this side of her - her shadow, her inner beast and stubborn to no end tormentor. She hated the color red on herself - hated the way her eyes would burn in their sockets as they changed from a warm glowing amethyst.. full of hope, vigor and life.. to one of a dark crimson that held nothing but disdain for the world. And she hated, with every fiber of her being, the way her other side would speak to them.. as if they were strangers no more deserving of attention as an insect on the side of a dirt road, when it was she who was worth nothing - worthless to even save herself, let alone the world she has been entrusted to.
Illya hated Esteem more than anything else she could ever loathe in the world combined - because she knew it to be the perfect reflection of herself.
Amidst the dark of the night, away from the judging eyes of her friends and found family who she feared of scaring away, she wielded her broad sword with a brutal, yet uncannily elegant stance. And Sidurgu had been among the first besides the lie that was Fray Myste to point that out.
He’d commented with much awe, and yet to the utter dismay and horror of the Warrior of Light herself of the way she harnessed and tapped into the shadows so naturally, and fought so mercilessly upon the battlefield that it’d been akin to watching her perform a grim, but beautiful dance. Even among torn flesh and blood, regardless whether it was that of her enemy or her own, the shadow in her soul flourished most when she, no matter how temporarily, accepted it as a part of herself.
But she never wanted to be a dark knight, never wanted to be in possession of Fray Myste’s soul crystal. And to this very day, she laments ever allowing her own naivety and kindness, the very thing Fray constantly mocked her for, to lead her to his lifeless body in the brume.
What cruel irony was it then, that the only way she could save the First right now, bring back the night to the scorching sky above - was to finally embrace the dark within herself.
It’s the longest she’s used her broad sword, the warmest she’s ever felt the scarlet soul crystal within her breast pocket, and the most she’s seem the scions look at her with a wariness that only served to tear her consciousness apart.
Esteem ever lacked in tact when it came to both fighting and speaking, though Illya would arguably prefer if she’d done the latter way less. And the extent of Esteem’s hostility towards her own allies would only occur to her when Alphinaud, of all people, had asked her if that was naught she or the others could do about the heinous, disgusting creature that possessed her body.
And in that moment, she’d felt a gut wrenching anguish, one that she has foolishly allowed to fester over the course of the past few weeks as they carried on their mission to wipe out the lightwardens of Norvrandt.
He’ll never accept you.
Sineaters stood no match against the abyss she spewed forth from palm of her hand and the slash of her sword. But she also stood no match against her own fragile mental fortitude, and in all her weakness, allowed herself to call his name - to ask him, against her better judgement.
She’d hoped fruitlessly with each lightwarden she slayed that the light she absorbed would cleanse her soul, even when she knew better than anyone else that light can never exist without dark.
Even if it destroyed who you were, even if it meant losing what made you whole, you would deny me?
If that’s what it took for them to accept me - for him to accept me.
Oh how she longed to rip herself apart, tear open her heart and crush it betwixt her already bloody, dirty hands. It wouldn’t be the first time her blood would be drawn by her own blade or nails, and she feared that as long as she kept living this selfish, ignorant life, she would never see a last. And how many times has she wondered just how much brighter the world would be if she were to not exist? How many times would she have to endure having her heart carved and split apart?
If it can stop the hurt, she would. If it would stop herself from being so ugly, so utterly and completely irredeemable as a person.
The screeches of the sineaters that her blade plunged into intermingled with the pained grunts of the warrior, as sweat trickled down her brow and caused her hair of moonbeam to stick to the sides of her neck and armor. The stench of purity wafts into her nose and she grimaces with a deep furrowed scowl. After hanging on for as long as she could, she’s beginning to slip again, and she curses beneath her breath before driving the end of the sword into the ground beneath her so hard, it forms cracks in the earth. Her vision’s growing foggy, with the voices of the scions that caught beside her echoing distantly as if she were slipping beneath water.
She can just barely hear Alisaie’s voice of concern, and Ryne’s expression of horror as Illya raises her left hand up to claw at her face, leaving hideous red lines down her eye and cheek.
Not again. Not again, dammit! Not in front of everyone!
And when Illya dares herself to look up, she sees Alphinaud, crouched in front of her with his hands raised, eyes glazed over with worry that she was sure would twist into hate soon enough.
And the years of her own ability to accept herself, fear of being cast out by the people she loved, and the many many scars of trauma she carried after fighting with no respite for herself for so long finally crashes onto her. Like a wave of self-realization, she finally understands that no matter how much she fought, no matter how much light she’d absorb, there would never be a way to salvage her.
She didn’t know why she’d decided to break now, and she was sure she had an exceptional talent for holding back herself. But for the first time in a long while, she feels tears pouring down her face from her eyes as they begin to shift in hue. The woman shuffles forward a few steps before collapsing onto her knees, sobbing uncontrollably.
“P-Please...please.. don’t look at me.”
And against her expectations, Alphinaud falls too, and embraces her tightly in his arms, pulling her against his chest even as a ruinous shadow begins to seep from her skin, pooling around them and threatening to blind his sight too.
She hears him whisper in her ear, and it’s her sole salvation against the setting sun and the umbra of the shadowy moonlight.
“Illya, I’ll always love you. Every part of you. Even if you can’t love yourself.”
Wondrous Tails SFW Entry #4
Prompt: Insomnia
Characters / Ship: Illya(WOL)/Alphinaud, featuring..Fray.. sort of
Mid-ShB, contains spoilers up until after the first dungeon of ShB
1,408 words
It should have been a victorious moment, a historical event that will no doubt be remembered by all in Lakeland for generations to come.
The arrival of dark, brought about by the might of the Warrior of Darkness herself. He had watched with his own two eyes as she absorbed the aetheric energy of the lightwarden into herself. And with a renewed expression of determination he’d not seen before of her, she thrust her hand up into the light-filled sky and banished it.
An era of darkness has come.. and though it truly is an irony that the hero that they’d call the Warrior of Light would be the one to oppose their very name here in the First, the Exarch was all too eager to kneel before her and beg her deliver this realm from utter destruction - as she had done for the Source before.
He knew not whether the Exarch had noticed.. but as a man who has stood by the hero’s side for many long summers, he caught a glimmer of fatigue in her eyes, masked only by words of pure altruism and bravery that she’s learned to recite mindlessly, and the confident little smile that only caused Alphinaud’s heart to ache.
It’d been hard enough to convince Alisaie to retreat to her suite to rest.. but even after he’d personally seen to shutting the door to his sister’s room behind himself, his mind was still frazzled with the day’s earlier proceedings - in particular worry over the white-haired lalafellin.
To him, she was more than the Warrior of Light, or even the Warrior of Darkness to the realm they knew as their temporary home now. She was his best friend, now partner, and the woman he’s come to think of as his very own true love.
He’d like to think he understands her, understood the strife and pain she felt, so that he could help shoulder at least part of that burden for her. It thus never ceases to frustrate him then, when she’d refuse to confide in him.
His heavy strides lead him through the eerily quiet corridors of The Pendants, no doubt the residents were enjoying their much deserved first dark night in forever. He isn’t too sure if he himself would be quite able to sleep with so much running through his mind, and just as he’d been about to resign himself to yet another possible sleepless night, he stops dead in his tracks.
She stood still, outside the door of what he believed to be her suite. The loose gown she wore indicated that she’d been in bed, or at least had been prepared to rest in bed.
But here she was instead, standing on her own lonesome outside her room, her head bowed so that the fringes of her pure white hair obscured her eyes from view.
“Illya?” His voice calls out softly to her.
Instead of being startled, or perhaps even hiding her face away from him as she is wont to do while flustered, the girl slowly tilts her head up slowly to stare at the young elezen.
All color drains from his face as he notices the very hue of her eyes - a dark blood red in exchange for the beautiful, glimmering violet he was used to.
And if the crimson of her eyes had not been enough, the very look in the girl’s eyes would have been enough to pierce a hole straight through his chest - had he not been any wiser on what... or who was in possession of her body.
“What are you doing?” all trace of gentleness in Alphinaud’s voice is replaced with a fury that has been boiling within him for the past few summers he’s known of Illya’s peculiar condition, a condition in which she is regularly haunted by visions of another man, both in the real world and in her very dreams.
From the rare occasions that Illya agreed to speak of her condition, Alphinaud had come to the conclusion that the ghost of a dead man has somehow latched himself onto her from sheer circumstance, a result of her kindheartedness, now backfired and used against her as this entity toys with her emotions and sanity.
From plaguing her with nightmares, to even hurting the people around her.. It’d be a lie to say Alphinaud has not toiled over tomes after tomes on what ways he could possibly get rid of his accursed man who tormented the woman he loved for seemingly no reason.
There was never any sympathy or care in Alphinaud’s glare every time Illya’s eyes turned red in the midst of battle, after all it was a mere result of this foul ghost exerting his control over her by force.
The man in question, Fray, merely scoffs and quietly tilts the girl’s head back down to conceal her face with her bangs.. and the blatant lack of response causes Alphinaud to grit his teeth.
“Why do you do this? Why do you want to hurt her so? Is it not enough to haunt her very dreams with horrid hallucinations? How much longer do you intend to defile her body until you are satisfied?!”
It takes all of Alphinaud’s last remaining shred of self-control to remind himself not to raise his voice, though every atom in his body begged to do so.
“And now.. you would deprive her of her sleep? Do you not know what she has been through??”
For a moment, he’d expected silence yet again.. In Alphinaud’s many attempts to communicate with this man, he has not once responded to him directly. He only ever speaks to Illya, and it was only to once more feed her distress. And when he does finally direct his words to someone other than Illya, he spoke to others as if they were a mass - a hivemind of nothing but bugs he could not care any less of. The complete opposite of Illya.
Fray is willing to trample on everything Illya cared for - from her dreams, her wishes, her bonds, her sanity, and now even her health. That was the only reasonable explanation.. the only explanation Alphinaud could accept.
“Idiot. You lot truly love to blame other people for all of the world’s problems, don’t you?”
Alphinaud admits that he could never get used to her voice sounding like that - to Illya’s voice sounding so..cold and devoid of the love and gentleness that was characteristic of her. No matter how many times he tells himself that this isn’t Illya, this isn’t Illya who is speaking.. that voice will never not claw at his chest and cause it to ache.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Are you that stupid? Are you not supposed to be her lover?” Her head turns upwards, crimson eyes spewing utter disgust in Alphinaud’s direction. “Perhaps it would wound you too much to think that this woman has always had difficulty giving herself in to sleep - and so instead of doing anything to save her, you would blame your own inadequacy on something else.”
His mind is racing too fast to keep up, to understand what kind of nonsense this man was spouting yet again.
And yet in his desperate attempt to brush Fray’s words off as nothing more than the mad ramblings of a sadist yet again, his final accusation towards Alphinaud pricked at him.
“My...own inadequacy?”
“Am I wrong? You of all people should have known, you of all the souls in both this realm and the Source should know better than anyone!” Illya’s voice rises, her head now fully turned up to glare at him.. and in a moment of weakness, Alphinaud swears that he sees a flash of violet in her eyes - hears not Fray, but Illya behind the disappointment and anger in those words.
Turning on her heels, the woman doesn’t bother to even cast a second glance back towards him as she opens the door to her suite.
She does however, have time to spare a few parting words of spite towards Alphinaud that he would spend the rest of the dark night mulling over.
“Her heart is weak. Too weak to bear all the burdens of this world. Like a cup, her emotions constantly fill, and fill, until it finally overflows.. and she begs me to release her from pain. If you will not save her, then I will.”
“Wipe the slate clean! Forgive and forget!
Convince yourself that she can be controlled!
The Warrior of Light! Our Weapon of Light!
It isn’t too late.. We.. We can still be free.”
