Masquerade (5148 words) by Evolve_Rat
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Hannibal (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Characters: Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham, Jack Crawford, Beverly Katz
Additional Tags: Stalking, Home Invasion, so you know pretty standard stuff for these two, Oral Sex, Rough Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, Canon-Typical Gore
Summary:
"Will knew he should give the postcard to Jack. He shouldn’t have even touched it, let alone opened it. But he should definitely call Jack and explain what’s happening.
So why wasn’t he picking up the phone?
Because Jack wouldn’t believe him when he said the Chesapeake Ripper was in his bedroom last night."
Someone left a postcard on Will's nightstand. He's certain that someone was the Chesapeake Ripper.
It became a inside joke between you two! You once called Sky you’re “other half” while relaxing by a beach The Chain had stumbled upon. Sky, flustered and touched by your words couldn’t help but say it back to you, but was quick to correct himself after a moments thought.
Sky, seeing your confusion, realized he had to explain a thing or two. So, he did. Sky spoke about his Loftwing and how he -and many others from his home- saw their Loftwings as their other half! But he was more than happy to have you be his other, other half. And how could you say no to such an offer?
Pumpkin
The thought of pumpkins themselves bring him fond memories of home. When he ran around balancing stacks of pumpkin that dwarfed him in size to the sweet smell of pumpkin soup he would deliver. Those were among the few happy memories he had during his adventure. Was he a little stress during it? Sure! But he felt like he could relax and forget the dangers he had faced.
Sky would be lying if he said he didn’t feel that way when he was with you. You reminded him of home and the memories he cherished, you made him feel so free. Just like home.
Cuddle Bug
You’re the BEST cuddle partner!! It doesn’t matter what position or who is the big spoon, he loves to hold you and to be held by you. Though most people might believe that HE would be the one to initiate the cuddles, he is more than willing to admit it was you! I can’t blame you!- I mean, Sky is like the softest, most comfiest person to sleep on!
Hyrule
Lucky Charm
When you’re by his side Hyrule can’t help but feel unstoppable! Your encouragement and support will never not make him flustered. Hyrule had always felt like luck was always fighting against him, and his fears worsen when he met the rest of The Chain. He felt less than, compared his companions, even when they told him otherwise! But with you, with you everything just clicked. With you by his side, everything that once scared him turned into but minor threats. Something he could over come while he held you close. Everything was just right with you.
My Hero
While yes, he is the hero of Hyrule sometimes heroes need heroes too! Hyrule admires you so much. He admires you so because no matter your flaws or fears, you continue to be the bravest person he knows! He looks to you for inspiration and comfort, for encouragement and criticism, for everything that he does not have but yearns for. You will always amaze him, no matter what.
Sweetie
You’ve got to be the sweetest person he’s met! Maybe you can be cold or stubborn with others, but with him you can’t help but warm up to him. Even the most sweetest of candies can’t compare to his Sweetie! He just can’t help the fuzzy feeling that spreads through his body when he sees your face. Everything you do warms his cheeks and leaves him with a goofy smile on his face!
Four
Precious
Oh, how else could he describe you. One word could never truly express how important you are to him but if he were forced to choose, “Precious” fits you perfectly. You are far more precious than any jewel or weapon, and he will protect and love you with all him might.
Giggles
Your laughter is one of his favourite things in this world (and every other) and he’d do anything to hear it. The way your body moves with each laugh that escapes you fills him with so much joy, he might burst! But as much as he loves your full, untamed laughter, he can’t help but swoon every time he hears you giggle.
Lovely
“exquisitely beautiful.“ That is the definition of Lovely and boy, Four couldn’t agree more! No matter what or where you guys are, you are the most stunning person he has ever seen. You could be dripping with sweat and covered head to toe in monsters guts and Four will still watch you in awe, stunned by your beauty.
Wind (Platonic)
Partner in crime
A very true statement! It’s not often that you two are far from one another, but when you are--well, everyone should look over their shoulders. You are his biggest helper when he wants to prank someone! You two are always on each others side no matter what!
First mate
He started calling you this when The Chain had stumbled into his Hyrule, you had manage to help Wind with working around a ship they found! You both made an amazing duo as you two manned the ship.
To him, you are the first person he can turn to for help or advice. Wind trusts you with everything, even a ship! He would be lying if he said he didn’t think about sailing the seas with you! He’d make you in first mate in a heart beat if, you too, wanted to cross the seas with him.
Dude!
Normally he calls you “dude” either when he’s really excited about something or when he’s irritated. He’ll come up running to you, calling out and saying he wants to show you something! Or the other scenario, he plops down next to you with a pout and crossed arms. He won’t talk for a bit unless you ask him what’s up --or he just gets bored of waiting and starts ranting. Normally it’s about the Chain and how they “baby him too much,” which is true in some cases but that’s not the point!
"Lily Evans liked girls. Well, she liked boys, too. Bisexual. That was the term she’d settled on." After 22 years spent in the closet, Lily is excited to finally start dating girls. In fact, she's quite determined to make up for a lifetime of relationships with mediocre men, and the messy-haired boy who works at the art museum isn't going to change her plans anytime soon. Definitely not.
Chapter 18: Who Cares
You could let it down
Jump into the river baby
Easy as it sounds
It's never quite as easily done
The current has us now, it's okay
Take into account that it's all about to change
Who knows, who cares
No one's been there
But I don't care
I know all have been there
I don't care
I know
-Who Knows Who Cares by Local Natives
At last, we come to the end of @blackestnight's commission!
In the wake of the Calamity, Ishgard finds its routine again, if a bit differently for how the frost has gripped it.
And sometimes, an assassination attempt is as routine as attending church. Or your own knighting ceremony, if you're Lucia goe Junius.
Such is the way of things.
word count: 7,084
Prev
~*~
Time passed strangely, after that. Neath a singular moon, and in everlasting, unnatural winter besides, but eventually, Ishgard all but forgot there was ever a time that Lucia did not belong to her. While she was still regarded with some wariness and suspicion by those who had never met her, those who had, had deemed her character beyond reproach—even if Lucia struggled to believe that herself. On some days, Lucia could pretend, almost, that she had always been Ishgardian, down to her marrow. Almost, but never could she forget where she came from, even three years after hobbling away from the Calamity.
Garlemald certainly did not.
So in a way, Lucia had suspected that it would come to this, on a morning as otherwise remarkable as this one, where her past came back, baring its fangs in earnest. That truth had dogged her, from the moment she had turned her coat, and yet, now that it was here, she felt almost disappointed at how over prepared she had been for it.
After all, it’s not every day one catches out their own spymaster.
It had been a near thing, to his credit; were it not for the familiar, hawkish gold of his eyes, she might have passed him on the street entirely, his disguise was so thorough: all the way down to having shaped wax around the shell of his ear to give them the impression of an Elezen point, he had looked like any other middling noble, at a glance. Then, he’d turned his head to look at her, too sharply, and displaced the oddly shaped hat on his head, just a little, just enough to reveal his third eye, glinting in the sunlight that bloomed off of the snow.
Upon realizing it was him, Lucia could only balk at the coat pin he’d worn in place of a House Crest: a snake, eating its own tail. Time and distance had made her forget the sheer pretentiousness that he was prone to, when given the opportunity.
It had startled her into laughter, and that had been enough for the swing of his dagger to falter. Enough for her to catch his blade hand at the wrist, twist it back, and claim the weapon for herself when a strike to his arm made his hand go suddenly lax.
If he had been surprised by her counter, he didn’t show it. The only thing that stayed her hand from retaliating immediately was that he made no move to follow up his strike. On the contrary, he instead leapt back to create distance.
Worried for a trap, Lucia waited, hands itching to claw and tear away this last piece of her life’s discarded tapestry.
The leather on the dagger’s grip creaked when her hold tightened. This wasn’t one of the better knives she remembered him having at his hip; either he didn’t feel safe risking it here, which was unlikely, or he had meant for her to see him.
Mayhap he wasn’t as rusty as she thought—or maybe happenstance was the best smokescreen. With wetwork, the lines between were ever blurry.
After a few long moments of little more than breathing in the yawning space between them, Ouroboros smiled. Something about the exchange pleased him. Of course it did.
“And here, I’d worried you’d been got.” her mentor laughed, even as his posture did not slacken. “It’s almost like you never left, Little Wolf. Almost.”
Lucia had forgotten; everything about him was quiet; even his voice was closer to smoke than sound. His chortling made the air around her heavier; with how she had to strain to hear him, she felt as though she were leaning toward a smoldering building, aflame only moments before. She fought the urge to cough.
“Had to keep my fangs sharp.” she answered.
“You’ve done well for yourself, pup. Two years past your extraction date, and here you are. Still so wrapped up in your sheepskin, you forgot you were meant to take it off.”
His lip twitched, once. Slight as the motion was, it was still enough for her to see the flash of his teeth in a barely withheld snarl. Slowly, his foot slid against the cobblestone, widening his stance. Though he reached for no weapon, Lucia would be a fool to think he didn’t have several others on him, aside from the knife she’d already taken from him.
“So you would cut it off me.” Lucia snorted.
Widening her stance and bending at the knee to make herself a smaller target was as familiar to her as breathing: on the inhale, she’d shifted her grip on the handle into something more fit for use, and slid into position as she exhaled, ready to strike on the next breath.
Like a snake. Like Ouroboros would expect. Which would be his downfall—she would strike as a dragon.
“Grew tired of waiting for your lackey to return?” she asked.
A headache pinched behind her eye at the deepening of her frown, as she recalled what few Imperials had been sent after her, before now. At first, they had been recon scouts that she’d caught out in the Highlands, before they ever tainted so much as the Arc of the Worthy. Doubtless, they had initially thought she had failed, and was presumed dead. Perhaps it had been reckless to kill them. But then, she knew Garlemald would never stop sending people; even if they had decided she was dead, Ishgard was still a hole in their network that would always need mending.
Thus, the work was never done. No rest for the righteous. Aymeric had shown her that.
“You know how it goes. Or at least, you should: you were one of my best.” Uoroboros said. Even his flattery was drenched in venom. It glinted off his teeth when he snarled, “It’s time you came home.”
“I did.” Lucia replied evenly. “Four years ago.”
Another twitch at the corner of his lip. Not a smile: she’d said something he misliked.
Good.
“How this goes down is up to you, Little Wolf: you come back, nice and quiet, and we help you remember how to behave. Everything goes back to normal.”
He drew another dagger from his boot. When the sun caught the emerald at the pommel, she recognized it as his favorite. It took more energy to not roll her eyes than it was worth. Still, she managed.
“Or I take your pelt.” he finished his threat, as he settled his stance.
Lucia wanted to laugh at the implication that there was a choice involved at all.
The moment she turned her coat, she knew that there was no going back. She had been fine with that. Was still more than fine with it. And her old mentor truly thought she could be convinced, that she wouldn’t be “accidentally” murdered in the middle of her re-education? Did he think her still as bought-in by propaganda and a lack of choice as she was when she knew naught else?
Lucia almost couldn’t recognize herself anymore, compared to that starving, shivering little soldier. She liked who she was now better, now that she remembered what it was to live.
“Let me give you the choice Garlemald won’t: leave, and tell them I’m dead. Or die here.” She counter offered, already loosening her muscles in anticipation for the need to react quickly.
Louder than his speaking voice, he snarled. It rumbled in his throat, rattled the stone beneath their feet. It reminded Lucia of an aevis warning off other predators, when it has caught its next meal.
He said nothing else, but his dash forward to close the distance was answer enough, and the answer she was anticipating. Where he had years of experience on her, she had a broader scope of attacks than he did.
That, and it was clear that despite all of his teachings, his lessons—often quite literally—beaten into her, he was running on sentimentality.
Ouroboros’ knife cut the air with such force that it whistled. The shrill sound was interrupted, by the clang of the knife she stole from him deflecting the attack. Rather than let the blades catch, as was doubtless his intent, she angled the blade, so that his slid off of it in a watershed.
His weight was thrown off balance with the rest of his swing—she’d been right, and he hadn’t anticipated a watershed guard. Seeing the opening for what it was, Lucia got a solid strike to his ribs, the articulated steel guardings on her fingers lending enough additional resistance behind her hit that she felt his rib give, just a bit.
A fracture, if not a break, then. Good. That would make him sloppy.
Hissing like his namesake, Ouroboros staggered back and attempted to right his footing. Jaw flexing under the pressure of clenching it, he braced his injured side, and instead shifted to strafe her.
As though it were as harmless as an apple plucked from a merchant’s stall, Lucia tossed the dagger to her left hand, toward the side he had begun to strafe to, effortlessly. “Advance if you want a quicker death.” When he did not move, she snarled, “Come on, then.”
The downturn of his brow told her that he disliked her casting aside his training so readily. Dare she realize that, perhaps, this was more personal than he would have her believe? Dare he admit that weakness, were she to give word to it?
When Ouroboros took another step to strafe to her left and she did not move, he realized she had meant it, and stopped walking. His eyes were colder than she remembered—or maybe he was doing what he had always done, and took in the surroundings to better blend into them.
In the blink of an eye, he dashed again—but Lucia anticipated it. Despite this, her weapon’s crossguard catching his dagger at her temple was a near thing. Near enough that she felt the sharp edge of his blade clack against her circlet. Sending a silent, thankful prayer to Ophianne, Lucia twisted herself to displace their weight.
“You’re lashing out. You’re homesick.” he said, in a droning tone that steadily grew in volume, as if he were trying to drill down to the core of her with it.
He struck again, as she leapt back, as he added, “And you’re so deep in your cover, you don’t know which way is up. You’re not the first lost little lamb I’ve brought back to the flock. You won’t be the last.”
How many of those “confused” spies had actually turned their coat, only to lack the strength to keep themselves safe, and succumb to the reintroduction program? How many of Lucia’s own colleagues had she seen return from stints where they were gone for months, sometimes over a year, where they never quite seemed the same, after they had tasted the air beyond Garlemald’s smog? Too many. She’d looked away, then, because she hadn’t had the strength, either.
But that was then.
“You think I’d just go back quietly? After everything I have learned?” Lucia asked in a low snarl.
Nerves shook her hands, shook the dagger in her grip. Rolling her shoulders, she willed her hands to be steady: she yet had need of them.
“Oh no, Little Wolf.” He grinned then, slowly, in contrast to the swiftness of his dash, as he moved to strike again. “I expect you to howl.”
He was nothing, if not fast. When he pushed off his toes into a dash to close the distance again, and aimed to stab her in the gut, Lucia sucked in a quick breath, and darted to the side, taking a quick swipe at his neck with her dagger.
In time with the feeling of the blade connecting with his skin, Uoroboros grunted, as he bent his body away from the blow, and tucked himself into a roll, to give himself some distance.
When he scrambled to recover, he pressed quick fingers to the wound, and tested it. What he found clearly did not concern him—it had, admittedly, been but a glancing blow. The wound was likely superficial.
A pity.
“Do you know how many other deep cover agents I’ve had to bring back, shell shocked and barely knowing who they were anymore, after Carteneau? You are but another in a long list I have to work through.”
He was trying to dance between kind and callous, as he always had done.
Before, it had been an artful balance, teetering on the knife’s edge, one that had always left Lucia’s vision tunneled until all she could focus on was keeping her superiors placated—as if they were hungry lions, circling her in their den. She had thought, at the time, that she was an unaffected, calculating jackboot. She’d thought that she felt nothing, just like she’d been taught. It was protection.
But those lessons had not kept her safe—they were never meant to. They kept her afraid.
“You could write them off as dead.” Lucia quipped, unimpressed with his goading.
She took the momentary lapse in fighting to check her wrist—a twinge of pain rippled along the muscles there, but it was otherwise intact.
Not bad news at all; it confirmed, at least, what she’d noticed in defending from his blows; he wasn’t so discomposed that he had lost his form, but he had now opted for brute strength, over the more dexterous flourishes that such attacks often demanded, to avoid damage to the attacker.
Which meant that she needed to rattle him even more.
“Do you know why I knew you would try something today?” Lucia asked with a cruel, toothy grin.
“The day had no significance. Only the opportunity.” he dismissed sharply—sharp enough that she would almost suspect that she had cut too close to the heart of the matter.
“A knighthood ceremony always has increased security. If there was to be an opportunity, it would have been well before now, or well after.” she parried, in word and deed, as she easily let his dagger shed off her blade like water. “’Tis not I that is emotional and confused, methinks.”
“Listen to yourself!” he snarled, and closed the distance almost too quickly for Lucia to guard against, but when he aimed to catch their blades together at the cross guards, she realized that he was trying to get close, but not committing to a lethal strike just yet; if he had been, he would have had a perfect opening for her heart, right in that moment. Gruffly, he demanded to know, “Do you even recognize yourself anymore?”
The force of him putting his entire weight on their crossed blades was enough to make her wrists twinge in warning. Twisting to let him stumble out of their lock, she used her momentum to swing her knee into his sternum. The impact was enough that she felt the way his lungs sunk into themselves, atop her knee, as she forced the air from them.
“A little more every day. No thanks to you.” Lucia grunted.
Ouroboros managed to get a petty swipe of his blade at her leg, though she managed to bolt back quickly enough that it was a shallow cut, just above her knee. It had only cut through cloth, and had not even glanced her mail, for a blessing.
“Ingrate!” he howled, indignant. “I will remind you of all you owe to me!”
Knowing that the snake had every sense coiled around her movements, she made sure he watched her lower her head, ever so slightly, and held his gaze as she prayed, half into her pommel as she brought it back up, “Blessed Halone, guide my blade.”
Not quite so eloquent as Bishop Egrant’s guided prayers, but graceful enough to incite a snarling, vicious lunge out of Ouroboros, his enraged offense bleeding him of his technique.
His knife caught in the sleeve of her mail—a loose fold, that only just grazed her skin. A price she gladly paid, in exchange for the attempt at embedding her knife in his chest.
Alas, from the angle he had her, most of the strength of her upward swing connected too soon, caught by his arm. Though her blade pierced the leather of his vest, and bled him, it was not a lethal wound—it was not even enough to impede him, from leaping backward with a flourish of his blades, to discourage her pursuit.
But Lucia knew better than to look for an opening; even if he left himself one, he would obfuscate it with a flurry of attacks, were she to attempt taking advantage of it. No, if she wanted to guarantee he would slip up, she would have to behave the way he thought she would—
When Ouroboros lashed out with his dagger again, and aimed for her throat, she leapt back with a wide sweep of her arm to knock the blade away. As she skittered across the cobblestone, she made a show of flinching with her whole body, enough that the knife she’d taken from him faltered in her grip. She even managed a strained noise from the back of her throat, and an accompanying wince as though she were in pain, as she let the dagger fall through her fingers.
An opening.
Ever the opportunist, her old master lunged for her, even before her weapon had hit the ground. Mid-leap, with both of his daggers poised overhead to strike, Lucia couldn’t help but find his serpentine name more fitting than it had ever been before.
Just as Ouroboros committed his entire life to that strike, Lucia committed to hers, letting her muscles go lax as she dropped to a crouch. When the discarded, stolen knife clattered to the ground, she ignored it altogether. Instead, she reached toward her boot, her fingers brushing a familiar leather latch—
Always good to have a spare knife in your boot, she heard Ophianne in her head, and in a flash, she pictured the delicate, flower painted porcelain on the handle of Ophianne’s boot knife, as she used it to cut the yarn she had been knitting with. What sort of knife that is, depends on the job it’s doing, I suppose.
Ouroboros’ shadow eclipsed her, as he made to land his feet on the stone, and his daggers in her spine. Quick as lightning, Ophianne’s floral painted hunting knife slotted itself neatly in the hollow made between two of his ribs, and his sternum. Neat enough, in fact, that he seemed not to realize that he had been struck, until she used her other hand to catch the weight of his torso, as he started to land. Instead, she vaulted him over her shoulder, and used his momentum to throw him away from her.
The moment she threw Uoroboros with her free hand, the other twisted Ophianne’s knife out of him. It was not his to keep—she was not his to keep; he, and the Empire that had made them both into this, had taken enough from her.
No more. No more.
As he sailed some few fulms, their eyes met. For a moment, Lucia almost didn’t recognize him, for the expression on his face; she isn’t certain that even he knows the last time that he felt fear, before this moment. His back connecting with the brick ledge guarding him from the abyss below jarred him from that shocked horror, and he yelped on impact, before crumpling in on himself.
Lucia never knew his real name. In a sense, she supposed she never truly knew him at all. But she knew how he worked; she knew, were the roles reversed, he would draw it out. Make her hurt. Make her suffer. Because she had gone and ran from the pack, like a bad, little wolf.
I am choosing to be better, Lucia reminded herself, as she did every day, and stepped forward.
For all his rambling to try and knock her off kilter, it wasn’t Lucia that had let sentiment steal her focus, this day. For all his insistence that none of them would ever be better than him, here he sat. Broken. Bitter, too, she realized, as he tried to spit venomous words at her, and only managed blood, for his trouble.
When she hauled him up by the straps on his leathers, and held him high enough that the toes of his boots only just brushed the cobblestone, she made a point to hold him there with one hand, as she held her mother’s knife in the other.
“The Black Wolf does not rear weak pups.” Lucia reminded him, just before she shoved him over the stone railing.
Ouroboros, her mentor, her spymaster, the man she had tried to look up to, for the better part of her life, lived up to his namesake to the last: undone by his own protégé, undone by his own arrogance and ambition, slithering away with nary a noise, as he fell into the mists below.
When she could no longer see his form through the fog, Lucia reminded herself, with a prim brush of her coat shoulder to straighten it: “He did not start with me.”
As she bent and returned her knife to her boot, she wondered at just how much of her past would ultimately wind up down there, beneath the swirling wind and ice aether.
Whether she would join them, in the end.
As the clouds shifted above her, the overcast light glinted off of something that caught her eye; lying on the stone floor, some ilms away, was Ouroboros’ prized possession: that godforsaken dagger.
The emerald embedded in the pommel stared up at her, familiarly unfeeling.
He’d often described his weapons as extensions of himself: “If I am a snake, then I suppose these are my fangs.” He had shrugged off someone’s offensive comment about his wetname.
If the rest of him disappeared without a trace, so too, should this—but perhaps, with more precise purpose.
Hunting trophies sent messages all their own, after all. It would be nothing, to get this back to the Capital. They would know what it meant.
But that was for later, once she’d tracked down the last of her old contacts that she knew had begun to creep closer to Coerthas. For now, she wrapped the dagger and tucked it within her coat, turned on her heel, and made straight for the Vault; Ishgard so loved Her itineraries, of course, and it wouldn’t do for Lucia to be late to her own knighting, after all.
Least of all, because Aymeric was the one knighting her, as was his duty, as Lord Commander.
~*~
The ceremony itself was every but as painfully stiff, and overly long, as any other formal gathering that the Holy See was directly responsible for. It was less the procession, than the meaning behind it, that made such rituals so sacrosanct, for Lucia: every step she moved through, was another affirmation: every action, a choice. Her choice.
When she returned home—in her new apartment, no less, as a citizen of Ishgard, paid for by her own salary, no less!—Lucia marked the date down in her journal. It was important not because of the ceremony that earned her, at long last, her own Templar chainmail, but because of the celebration that was had, as a housewarming party, and celebration both, wherein Aymeric insisted on cooking and serving the lot of them, Margelyne and Grafant gave her pointers on how best to store her dishes, and how to dry her clothes when it got too cold to hang them outside, and they all drank entirely too much wine, all the while.
She ultimately decided to present Aymeric with the dagger she had taken as a trophy, from Ouroboros. He was the newly minted Lord Commander, of some few months, after all. If there was anyone, in any position of power, that she trusted not to twist this offering into some morbid confession of her turning traitor twofold, it would be him.
Once the wine had made her jaw too loose to clench, when she thought back on it, she told him all of what had happened, as she had gifted it to him. As she pressed the handle into his palm, she said that she trusted him, and his judgement. In turn, she asked him to trust her, when she said that it was no one’s choice but hers, to give it to him.
“Thank you for telling me, and for your trust, Lucia,” Aymeric told her, when she was done. “I will do my utmost to honor this.”
But he always said things like that. Thus, she thought naught of it, and so, they returned to their merriment for the evening, without sparing that dagger another thought.
Her first shift was not for a few days, after that celebration—in truth, the primary reason that she had reveled unreservedly—so when she returned to the Congregation the following Firesday, Lucia had no frame of reference, for what was considered normal.
Even still, she imagined that there was little precedent for such a commotion, coming from the lift, as it descended to the main floor of the Congregation, just as she had stepped inside its doors.
The muffled cacophony of voices became clear with the crack of the lift doors opening—she spied Aymeric first, at the center of the lift, and saw that, as the doors pulled back fully, he was flanked by a riotous, dissenting member of the clergy, robes fluttering with every jab of his gnarled finger, far too close to Aymeric’s personal space to be considered appropriate..
What they could be dissenting over already, Lucia could only begin to guess; they were so eager to insist that Aymeric was wrong about something, they were yapping inarticulately, like an ill-trained child, yelling just to be heard.
Wordlessly, the newly appointed Lord Commander held up his hand, once they had stepped off the lift. Immediately, a hush fell over the room. The clergyman, as if viscerally reminded of Aymeric’s newfound influence, cowed, in the face of his icy expression.
“I would be hard pressed to find one more informed on affairs beyond our walls—nor one so adept at obtaining information.” Aymeric said slowly, as if this were not the first time he had needed to explain this.
“You have no proof of—!”
“Ah, First Commander!” Aymeric cut off the clergyman’s squawking, as he looked over at Lucia.
First Commander? She thought, taken aback. Granted, her knighting ceremony was already a bit of an uneventful blur, but she was fairly certain that she had not been granted a rank, as of yet. When did that happen?
Lucia looked behind both of her shoulders, searching for someone else he might have been looking for, that she had missed.
There was no one to be seen.
“Lord Commander?” she called, begging without words for some context.
“You have no proof of her loyalty to aught but you!” the clergyman pressed, their face resembling a tomato. “She has not even had a full shift as a knight!”
“I owe Lucia my life, several times over.” Aymeric answered immediately. “As for her record: in truth, she has had years worth of experience, as my family’s squire. And if that is insufficient proof, of her unwavering loyalty...”
He reached into his new, ornate robes, rummaging for something. Somehow, she did not expect to see the glint of the emerald, embedded in the pommel of Ouroboros’ dagger, and yet, when Aymeric held it out in front of him, Lucia found that she could not be surprised, that he had found a way to work this into his mad scheme.
“On the day of her knighting, she defeated Garlemald’s spymaster, when he came on assignment to infiltrate Ishgard.” He held the dagger in his hands, calloused fingertip plucking at the sharpened edge of the blade, as he said, “Upon his death, his dagger was presented to me, by her very hands. Witnesses confirm his death by her hand. How could one question her loyalty, thus? Or her worthiness, to be named First Commander?”
“Over so many others! Many others, who have served for years!” they pressed.
“Would you levy that same complaint against my choice of Second Commander? I have not heard you say such misgivings with regard to Ser Handeloup, and yet, he has served only some two years longer than Ser Lucia.”
“That is not the same—”
“And why is that, Cardinal?” Aymeric whirred on them suddenly, bearing his full attention—and height—to loom over them. “Mine ears are open, to receive thy good word. Enlighten me.”
When it became clear that the Lord Commander was not interested in playing word games until one of them got their tongue tangled, the Cardinal turned toward one of the few other occupants in the room: a kindly looking fellow, with some few scars visible around his face.
“Surely, you must be uncomfortable, sharing your position with—”
“I am not sharing my position with anyone, Cardinal.” The knight—Ser Handeloup, she presumed—answered plainly, not even letting them finish the question. Bowing, he explained, patiently, “I am the Second Commander. Ser Lucia is my superior officer, as First Commander. And I am honored, to serve with her.”
As Lucia struggled between the want to laugh, the impulse to hide her face forever, and the urge to throw something hard at the back of Aymeric’s head, the Cardinal realized that their arguments would go nowhere fast; with one final flail of their arms, they stormed out, into the cold of the morning, muttering angrily even after the doors had swung shut behind them.
“Well! That seems to have settled that, then!” Aymeric said around a sigh, as his posture eased, by some few degrees.
“Wh—wait, Lord Commander.” Lucia ground out, through clenched teeth, as she seized his arm in a way that was not at all professional. “A warning would have been nice!” she hissed through her teeth.
He feigned surprise. “Why, I thought I had made it clear from the first, that you were to be in my inner circle, if we were to work together?”
“I—that is—!” she sputtered, indignant, before she remembered that she was, technically, on her first day of work.
Removing herself from Aymeric’s personal space, and straightening herself, Lucia cleared her throat and forced out her concession, “Though I hardly count it as adequate, you make a point, Lord Commander.”
At the mention of his title, he grimaced. “Oh, that, that, will take some getting used to.” he admitted. “Anyroad, I suspect that you have scarce had a chance to introduce yourselves, the two of you. Do forgive me, for that—I kept meaning to, but—”
“Our patrols kept getting moved!” The Second Commander said, throwing his head back and laughing. “I felt like we kept just barely missing each other.”
“Thank you, for speaking up on my behalf—Ser Handeloup, was it?” Lucia spoke up.
“That I am, Ser Lucia—and you have naught to thank me for.” Ser Handeloup answered, snapping a salute to her. “The journey of your faith has ever seemed genuine, and your conduct, beyond reproach. I look forward to working with you.”
Doubtless, she would have knights saluting to her dozens of times more—and every day, at that, but the sight of Handeloup so effortlessly doing so sent her reeling. In the moment, she snapped a salute back to him, more on reflex than anything.
“I look forward to working with you, as well!” she said, and even to her, her voice sounded too loud.
What a first impression she was making. Would that she could dissolve through the floor.
When Aymeric turned on his heel to face her, he moved with practiced grace; she made a mental note to tease him when they were off duty, and ask him how many times he had to practice turning with that long, heavy coat.
Fury preserve, and those ridiculous pauldrons…
“Come, let me show you where your office is.” He said.
With a gesture from him, she fell into step at his side, as he led her through the winding corridors.
For a blessing, it was not so many turns to get to her office; fewer she had to memorize, as far as she was concerned.
“I know we took your measurements, as a part of welcoming you into the knighthood,” he said, as he shouldered a heavy, wooden door open, and ushered her inside.
As it turned out, her shield had been brought ahead of her, and was resting on its own armor rack— parallel to a blade that she had never seen before. Its make reminded her of some of the more gilded weaponry of the Theocracy’s more specialized, decorated soldiers. She could imagine that Ser Handeloup was given a sword that was much like this one.
The office was otherwise spartan: a desk with a simple but comfortable looking chair, a trunk for any personal effects, and an ornate heating vent, with a wrought iron grate, that she could open, or shut, to her personal comfort. Light bloomed from the candelabras at the back wall, and the cool sunlight streaming in from the tall, narrow window at the center of it.
Otherwise spartan, save for an armor rack, deliberately placed in the center of the empty space of the room, a distinct suit of platemail draped over top of it. The deep silver of the armor was framed with bands of deep red—the same as the shield Celestinaux had bestowed upon her. What few details there were, in that not-quite gilded koppranickle, were understated, but matched the detailing on the Lord Commander’s attire. The entire ensemble fair gleamed in the sunlight.
“Your chainmail is meant to be worn beneath this plate—the armorer is eager to hear your thoughts on how it fits.” Aymeric continued, as though they were discussing the weather. “Ser Handeloup will be trying on an identical set as we speak, I imagine. When you are finished, pray join us back in the main hall.”
He lingered, when she made a sputtering noise. Realizing she was fit to burst with questions, he sighed, and said, “Alright, let it out.”
“I’m your second?” she gawked.
He arched a brow, and feigned some meager offense. “And here I thought you had faith in me, Lucia. Pray, do not sound so surprised.”
“You managed to get me promoted on my first day. To your second in command.”
“In all fairness, I hardly anticipated being Lord Commander already. If I must needs be unexpectedly elevated beyond my station, I refuse to go alone.” he reasoned. “I regret to inform you, but you made this your problem.”
That, she did. And would do so, again, and again, if the opportunity were presented to her again.
Not that she would tell him that. That would require admitting that he had won.
“You are,” Lucia said, shaking her head in disbelief, even as she smiled. “An absolute bastard.”
“And adopted!” Aymeric chirped, on his way out the door.
~*~
Routine was as familiar to Lucia as it was to any soldier. To some extent, it was something of a comfort.
That her routine had changed, over the course of her life, mattered little—what was important, was that she had one to anchor herself to, that did not harm her for her efforts.
It was a curious thing, how similar her routine looked on the surface, when she compared it to her life before Ishgard: how she would rise with the sun, and take the time to limber her body up, with a few quick stretches. Once her body had woken up a bit more, and her mind had caught up to her, she would then perform her daily cleanliness rituals, dress herself.
Lucia had lived in this armor enough years that she could buckle it on and off without sparing so much as a glance at the buckles and clasps. The motions were as familiar as breathing, the staccato click of a buckle snapping closed a rhythm as familiar to her, as her own heartbeat.
Armor thus adorned, she would present herself for inspection in front of the mirror, for her own approval. Once obtained, she would strap her hard earned blade at her hip, and affix her family’s shield to her back.
Then, and only then, would she remove her circlet, from its delicate, velvet lined case.
Years of wear and tear—and the odd mark of a glancing dagger—had left the once pristine metal dulled from the passage of time, marred by scuffs and marks of her survival alike. The opal, at its center, while still a lustrous focal point, had dimmed, without the patient care of a goldsmith.
Miss Hagane had offered, on more than one occasion, to replace the thing outright. A generous offer, every time, but one that Lucia was reluctant to take, until there was truly no salvaging this one.
The patina of the metal was familiar, smoothed down by her inspecting fingertips, over the years, as she shifted it to settle over her head.
Even once she had donned her boots, she was not quite finished dressing, before she left. Not without her rosary.
Before she would put it on, she would inspect the beads—the precious onyx and star sapphires, interwoven with little gold beads. She could track where her hands had roved over each bead, as she prayed, by the faint chipping of the gold paint, on those dividing beads. Often, she would, in search of any signs of damage.
Only once that rosary was tucked carefully in the front of her armor, where once she had hidden a different sort of beacon, did she step out of her door, toward Saint Raymanaud’s, on her way to the Congregation.
It was only just six in the morning, when Lucia slipped through the massive doors, and closed them behind her as quietly as she could.
The frigid early morning wind howled, and she had to shove the door closed with more force than she had anticipated. Alas, it was more commonplace, in the wake of the Calamity.
While the sun had begun its ascent around the same time that Lucia had left her apartment, there was not yet enough sunlight to be caught up in the stained glass windows of the cathedral. Entire clusters of lit candles, dotted among the shelves and aisles of the church, bathed the muted space in a warm light.
This was her favorite time of day to come here.
The only people around to disturb her were some members of the clergy, ambling about to start their day, and some few shopkeepers, and morning workers, all performing the same comforting routines as her.
There were so few of them at this hour, however, that her footsteps echoed, even muted by the runner of red carpet as they were. Enough that her entrance was of note, for how it disturbed the deep quiet.
Keeping to the far back of the pews, Lucia shuffled herself toward the outside corner, and carefully knelt upon the cushioned, retractable hassock, attached to the pew in front of her.
It had taken years of practice, to know how to pray. The act was, in and of itself, not inherently hard, though finding the words, or even knowing where to start, was often the hard part.
As she had learned from the first, however, even before she had understood what faith had even been, she had been gifted a reliable way to begin her prayers, at least:
“O Halone, I give you thanks for this blessed day,” Lucia murmured, and practiced finding the rest of her prayer, along the way.
She never thought her prayers were graceful things. Not in the way that Ophianne’s had been. But she had found a little more of her own grace, every time she tried.
With an oath that she would never stop trying, Lucia left her tithe, and stepped back out into the cold of the morning.
In stark contrast to Saint Reymanaud’s, the Congregation was, as ever, a bustle of activity, knights meandering, and often half asleep, as their bodies tried to remember how to march, before sunrise. The night shift, only just beginning to wane, marching off in a hurry, eager to shower, eat, and sleep.
The more senior knights, who had gotten to know her over her tenure as First Commander, all greeted her with formal familiarity, letting her in on that particular morning’s joke. Something about someone’s partner, something crude, in all likelihood.
Ser Handeloup would often bring coffee that his wife made, and greet Lucia with a tin cup of her own, in lieu of words.
The First Commander of the Temple Knights brooked no favorites, but Ser Handeloup’s wife was exempt. Her coffee was divine.
Once they both had their cups, they would take the lift to the Seat of the Lord Commander together, to report in.
As she expected, Aymeric would greet them each with a pastry—“Margelyne would never forgive me, if I did not share them,” he would say, every time, as if he did not go out of his way, to help her make them.
Handeloup would pour him a cup, in kind, from the thermos, and they would all share breakfast, as they congregated over the day’s itinerary. It never took them long—a quarter of a bell, at the most—to finish, but it was their own, crucial ritual. In a way, the morning did not feel right, without.
It was one last piece of peace, before they were swept up in the demands of their station. That the Theocracy was overthrown did not change this fact, but for how it increased the need for their attentions. Oftentimes, it was all they could do, to buckle down and push through, until they were all back in that same office, pouring over more coffee, and an ever escalating amount of paperwork.
Often, it was thankless. For a certainty, few would even begin to understand, not only the effort it had taken to get there, but the effort it had taken, to keep progressing. Fewer still, would even try to.
And yet, Lucia would greet the next dawn, and the next, with the same routine. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and she would start the same ritual again, to face it, every time.
There was no sense in leaving all the work to god, after all.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 13/13
Fandom: Game of Thrones (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Addam Marbrand/Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Addam Marbrand/Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Addam Marbrand
Characters: Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister, Addam Marbrand, Bran Stark, Arya Stark
Additional Tags: Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Heavy Angst, Me dealing with my s8 rage, my catharsis, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Misogyny, Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Incest References, Explicit Sexual Content
Series: Part 3 of Me Without You
Summary:
Continuing the events from "Brienne Without Jaime" and "Jaime Without Brienne".
