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.
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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.
