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I miss your cold dead hands
I miss your cold dead lips
I miss your cold dead heart
The sea always reminded her of the Steppe. The susurrus was the same; water instead of grass but it sounded like home. She could hear it before she smelled it, before she saw it. Past the gates of Vesper Bay it spread out to the end of the world, shining and blue. Lighthouses and an abandoned Garlean fortress studded the coastline. But she saw none of that, not yet. She looked at the high walls of stone, the columns of earth, and she began to climb.
Suren knew the heretic first as Iceheart. An enemy with the power of a god. Fighting gods was something she was getting a reputation for.
They battled more than once, and Suren was there when Iceheart’s followers waged bloody war on the people of Ishgard. When they met again, alone, in an abandoned farmhouse, she drew a weapon without hesitation.
The spectre of the dragon Midgardsormr interceded. This was the beginning of a lot of things. The lady Iceheart spoke of her dead family and the grief it caused her. Of her guilt over the deaths of innocents in the war. She revealed her Echo; the soul-speech of Hydaelen she shared with Suren. Something unspoken and strange passed between them.
Before Iceheart fled she said to Suren “we are now as one” and that strange bond strengthened. When Suren finally returned to her allies she was shaken. And exhilarated.
The sun beat down as she climbed. It warmed her neck and she was grateful for it. The embrace of the Thanalan sun was the first thing that had made her feel like Eorzea was a place that might one day be called home. She knew fellow Xaela that found it overwhelming but she had near worshipped it when she arrived from over the sea.
Her progress was slow but steady. There was a core strength in her now that had never been there before. Months of training with “Fray” to thank in part. A lot longer facing primals and Garlean soldiers made up the most of it. She’d thought about wearing armour for the climb but decided that would make this too much like a challenge and not enough like a duty. She wanted solemnity, she wanted memory. She wanted this to be for Ysayle.
A truce was agreed. Speak with the dragons, end the war. A slayer of dragons, a slayer of men, a slayer of gods, and Alphinaud. A strange company for strange days.
Not long into the journey Iceheart - now Ysayle - started observing her.
“Something has changed in you, Warrior,” she said. “There’s a darkness that wasn’t there before.”
This stoked a fire in Suren’s stomach that clogged her throat with ash. She was desperate to deny it and she didn’t know why.
“I was betrayed, and it’s likely that most of my friends are dead,” she’d said in the end. “It leaves a woman unhappy.”
Ysayle had looked away from her then. Her voice was soothing and sympathetic when she spoke again. “I know that. Better than you might suppose. I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”
It didn’t feel like it was worth a lot, then. She was frustrated the conversation was happening at all. “Why did you agree to this?” she asked, forcing a change in subject. Anything to avoid looking at the boiling cauldron of darkness she’d found in herself. “You were so sure nothing will sway Nidhogg, why bother leading us to his brother?”
Ysayle looked to the skies. “Because you believe otherwise,” she said. “I feel your passion, Warrior. I feel it here.” She touched her heart, once. “If you can believe in bringing peace that strongly, then I feel it, and believe it. Mending the rift between our people has always been my goal.”
She moved to the head of the group again, leading them deeper into the wildlands. “I hope the peace you seek here finds itself in your heart as well, Warrior. That shadow may consume you.”
And once again Ysayle left her trembling and confused.
A tree root she thought might support her weight did not. It tore free from the rock face and pebbles cascaded down, raining off her face. She dropped with a squawk.
Caught an outcrop before she fell too far. Her shoulder spasmed. Her tail coiled around a loop of stone and she was anchored. She grunted and swore and tried again. She was scowling at the task and that felt good. Felt familiar. The world was so much easier to process when she had something immediate to be pissed off at.
She’d had a lot to be pissed off at lately. Perhaps she should have considered herself fortunate. After the chaos of the assassination attempt in Ul’dah she’d thought a lot about running, about going home and chancing the Garleans. But as events unfolded in Ishgard she had realised there was nowhere else she could be. There were things in this world that only she could do, and it was - frustratingly - her duty to do them. Ysayle had taught her that in part. Seeing the picture outside yourself and seeing how you shaped it.
She gritted her teeth and kept climbing.
The road to the Dravanian hinterlands was a long one, they walked for days. It would have been impossible not to talk to one another. Estinien devoted much of his time to schooling Alphinaud in some elementary survival skills and she devoted much of hers to Ysayle.
By now she found the woman fascinating. Their shared gift of the Echo, the elezen’s ferocious devotion to her cause, certainly her looks (that Suren was finding her increasingly attractive was a cause of heart-fluttering terror). She was singular. Suren learned of her family before the calamity, of her life in Tailfeather, and learned a great deal about Shiva.
“She could have saved us,” Ysayle said one evening as they made camp. “And I owe it to her to follow her path. She knew she could be a bridge between dragon and man, and she learned to love dragons. I would do the same.”
“You know,” Suren had said quietly. “Some say we au ra are descended from dragons.”
The pause was just long enough for her to desire oblivion.
But Ysayle’s laugh dispelled her horror. There was no cruelty to it. Something about her made it feel like she and Suren were sharing a joke. Or a secret.
“Remember when we fought at Akh Afah?”
It was impossible to forget.
Ysayle leaned close enough that Suren could feel her breath. “Did you imagine then that you might try and flirt with me someday?”
Much of the rest of the journey to Tailfeather was lost to Ysayle and Estinien arguing bitterly, but Suren would always remember that moment, the moment she blushed and the moment Ysayle couldn’t stop laughing nor explain to their companions why.
She pulled herself on top of the shelf of rock with an ugly grunt. There was dirt in her mouth. She’d pictured this being more dignified. She flicked her tail and looked around.
The sea was visible here, so was the fortress. She heard birds calling and smelled salt. Vesper Bay was out of sight but she felt the impression of the stone, she could place where the buildings were.
And above them, just at the edge of the shelf, she saw it. Just as she remembered. A lone tree. She allowed herself a small smile then.
Slowly, she started easing her way across the bridges and platforms of rock. All it would take is one wrong step and she’d be right back down below, possibly with a broken neck if she was really stupid. But she was nearly there.
They faced a primal together, Suren and Ysayle. Proud and chitinous Ravana, Master of the Sacred Blades.
Ysayle fell. She channeled the divine might of Saint Shiva and still she fell. Suren did what Suren always does.
As they turned their backs on the gnath and continued their journey Ysayle broke down in front of her; the expression on her face a mixture of grief and guilt. “I wasn’t strong enough,” she said. “I failed.”
“How? You’re alive and Ravana’s not, that isn’t what failure looks like.”
Ysayle shook her head. “Don’t patronise me. If you hadn’t been there--”
“I was there.” Suren took hold of Ysayle and forced her to look at her. She was so much taller but in that moment Suren felt like she towered over the despondent elezen woman. “I was there and we won. That’s what working together is. You’ve got my back and I’ve got yours, Ysayle.” The Echo pulsed between them as soul brushed soul.
Ysayle shook herself free of Suren’s grip and scowled. “A leader leads, Warrior. My people would follow me to the seven hells and back, I cannot fail them at a critical moment.”
“Needing others is not failure. You’re strong, but nobody’s strong all the time. And out here right now? I’ve got you.”
They locked eyes. Slowly, Ysayle spoke. “Why? Why did you want this alliance, Warrior? Why did you and the boy seek me out?”
It took Suren a time to work out her answer. “Because this is your land. You believe in the people here. I’m just an outsider the high houses took a fancy to. This isn’t my war. You believe so passionately in ending it. That’s a woman I want on my side. And...” The Echo hummed more lightly between them. “You know why. We’re linked. I had to find you.” She stormed past Ysayle and kept marching for the camp. “We’re losing light. Come on.”
She didn’t see Ysayle pause. She didn’t see Ysayle smile.
She reached the tree and leaned against it. Birds called high up in the sky and she squinted at them. She slid down the tree until she was sitting, one foot dangling over the lip of the stone shelf.
This would do.
She dropped her pack into her lap and flipped it open, going through the contents. Some food, some paints, and a large dravanian sculpture. The sculpture was of a dragon curled around a stylised rendition of an elezen family. Getting it made had been a nightmare and a half. She’d never had so many arguments with stone-cutters in all her life. She idly rubbed it with her thumb, removing imaginary dirt.
First she painted. A few light ritual designs from her clan on the white stone of the sculpture, red and blue paint. Some habits never went away.
After a moment or two she took a deep breath and turned around to examine the tree. Its roots were thick and its grip was firm. It wasn’t leaving this overhang of stone any time soon. Satisfied, she looked into the root network and began to dig into the dirt.
It was probably around the time of their trip through Moghome that Suren realised she was in love. By the twelve that was a ghastly realisation. All the vulnerability and the shameful, soft thoughts she kept hidden from the world and something in her made her want to show them to Ysayle, like lifting a rock and gathering a fistful of insects to thrust at her.
But it was an inescapable feeling that started around the time Ysayle was so charmed by the fluffiness of the moogles. It revealed some gentle side of her that Suren had never seen before. A side she wanted to see as much of as she could. So she spent time teasing and jesting with Ysayle until she could see more of that gentleness, more laughter. Doing absurd tasks for capricious moogles turned out to be the most restful and most relaxing thing Suren had managed to do since the betrayal at Ul’dah. And she was doing it with Ysayle. The Echo settled into a comfortable throbbing between them.
It didn’t last. Eventually the moogles agreed to call down an ancient dragon for them. Eventually their journey came to its end, to its ultimate purpose. Meet Hraesvelgr, end the war. Joy left and cold seriousness returned. It should have felt comforting to have everyone as stern and focused as she often was. She felt it as a wound.
On their last night around a campfire, after Estinien had drifted away to “keep watch” and Alphinaud had fallen into a fitful sleep, Suren tried to open herself to Ysayle. It was hell.
She did finally manage to clear her throat and say “You’ve turned out nothing like I expected, Lady Iceheart.”
Ysayle’s crooked smile pushed a hook through the valves of her heart. “I could say much the same, Warrior of Light. I must say I don’t think much of your dragoon companion. But with someone like you speaking for Ishgard, I feel much more certain this peace is something we can bring home with us.”
“And with you speaking for the Dravanians I feel the same.” She looked at her hands and tried to clear her throat, but kept failing to. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Ysayle. I’m glad I did.”
“So am I, Suren. I feel proud to call you a friend.”
Heat and cold in sequence down her spine. “Mmm. Friends. Yes.”
Ysayle tilted her graceful head to one side as Suren struggled with her inner turmoil. “Is something the matter?”
And fuck, it was then or never really, wasn’t it?
She took a deeper breath and met Ysayle’s expression and somehow she didn’t faint. She bit her lip, flicked her tail, and cajoled herself into speaking. Vulnerability. It was rough. “You mean a lot to me,” she said haltingly. “An awful lot. If you felt… that is if you wanted, if you were interested , I wanted to explore that.”
Ysayle’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
Suren knew she would die, right here and now, and that would be just. “I didn’t… look forget it, I spoke out of turn, if you don’t want to talk about it we can--”
Ysayle kissed her. That’s the thing that Suren still returns to. The kiss.
Three, actually. Forehead, nose, lips. Like she was forging a path between the tips of Suren’s horns. For a lady that went by Iceheart she was impossibly warm. Suren mewled like a kitten. It was perfectly pathetic. For a brief moment they were locked together.
But Ysayle drew away.
“There’s too much between us, Warrior,” she said. Suren liked to think there was sadness in her tone, but it might have been disdain. “I’ve caused so much death. You’ve taken the lives of people that followed me. This war has cut us too deeply.”
“But we’re looking to end the war,” Suren had replied, and hated herself for how pleading it sounded.
Ysayle did smile then. “Perhaps if we do end it, we can talk about this again. Suren I… I cannot offer you more, I am sorry.”
Suren should have left it there. Instead she said “I think I love you”, as if forcing the issue might fix the splitting of her heart, the fierce tugging of the hook in her valves.
It made things worse.
“I know I love you,” Ysayle replied. “This bond between us has given me more strength than you know. But that’s why I can’t inflict this suffering on you. In another life, perhaps.”
And that was the last they said of it.
In the fires and riots that took Ishgard on their return, when Ysayle quelled her soldiers and turned them towards peace, there was one last shared look between them and the Echo opened like a floodgate. All the longing, and all the grief poured between them in a torrent and Suren knew she wasn’t coming back.
She didn’t like to remember how it ended.
She finished and stood with a satisfied grunt.
The sculpture was half buried in an embracing bowl of roots. The dragon and the family looked out to sea and the tree protected them from the elements. The sun hit the sculpture just so, white stone illuminating brilliantly. The painted sigils glistened.
She sat down beside it and rested a hand on her knee, looking at the waves.
“Haurchefant got his city,” she said to the statue. “You only met him briefly but you’d have liked him. I wonder if he’s wherever you are. Speak kindly of me if he is.”
She closed her eyes and smiled at the thought of the two soldiers from different sides meeting in peace in the aether.
“So he got his city to look at. I thought you’d like somewhere warm, though.” She swept her thumb back over the sculpture, feeling the names carved into the family. “I brought your kin with you, figured they’d prefer it here to the avalanche. Back home we’d bury your heads in an anthill if we had your heads but… well.”
She sighed.
“I wish you hadn’t done it,” she said. “That was extremely selfish of you. You don’t know for sure sacrificing yourself is what saved us.”
The tree creaked slightly as the breeze picked up.
“But we won, thanks to you. And we might be able to stop this war. You made that possible. You did it, Ysayle.”
At long last, tears started. “You did it and I’ll never forgive you for how you did. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.”
She launched herself to her feet and stomped away, hoping that if she was fast enough and her motions were aggressive enough she might be too busy to cry. It didn’t work.
The sculpture remained. The ocean sighed and the sun shone and birds wheeled. For now, for the moment, Eorzea knew peace.