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Those We Could Save

Summary:

What if fate had followed a different path at the Vault?

What if it had been forced along a different path?

Chapter Text

 

"Smile for me, my friend. It suits you far better."

And then she was no longer holding her friend but a hollow shell, while hot blood soaked her clothes and her enemy withdrew, unpunished.

The following days were a blur. How could she tell Count Edmont how deeply she shared his grief, when she and Haurchefant had so little time together?

She'd only been included in the group of principal mourners because her status as a ward of House Fortemps barely made up for her being an outsider.

And so she'd stood at the ceremony, tears freezing on her cheeks and her heart's howling matched only by the wind, fixing her gaze on a wayward patch of fur on the Count's garments because to meet anyone else's eyes would shatter her self-control.

Sleep left her. She merely huddled without rest in her quarters for days on end, watching beams of sunlight move across the floor, and counting bricks to try to numb her mind.

It took the most rigid discipline to begin moving again, to wash and dress and leave her quarters, step after faltering step.  

Discipline, and the knowledge that Haurchefant would be devastated if she sank beneath her grief.

He told her once about how every Ishgardian mind had changed when the snows came, how they'd become accustomed to filling their bodies with duty and obligation when rations could not be had. The alternative was to let the cold claim them, and that they would not permit.

She could almost hear him now, feel the way he'd clap a bracing hand on her shoulder and say, "Hold fast to your duty, my dear friend, and let no sorrow turn your path."

"Fuck duty," she spat at his grave, and it didn't ease the pressure in her chest one bit.

She owed him everything: her life, her refuge from danger, the thawing of her heart after so long -

She owed him everything. She should not be angry with him.

She was furious.

 

Aurore woke with a start. Clutching at sheets that fought back, her breath was choked with rage and sorrow both, before she could regain her balance.

Her head was pounding, a clear sign of the Echo, and she could not keep herself from groaning, sitting up and clutching her head while the room span around her in odd little jerks.

None of the local chirugeons had an explanation for why her headaches were getting worse; those few who had even heard of the Echo only knew it as a fairy story at best.

Haurchefant was standing at the window when she woke, watching the dark snow and apparently lost in thought, but at the noise he was all attention; rushing to the bed, reaching to rub her shoulders and draw her tension away.

"Haurchefant, please don't fuss. It's passing already."

That was true enough: the pain was certainly easing, but in its wake she still felt flushed and strange.

She slowly clenched her hands into fists, relaxed them, trying to feel the control over her own flesh.

Predictably, Haurchefant had ignored her feeble pretence. He hadn't stopped massaging her, and as he discovered a tight knot of muscle at the base of her neck, he gave a forceful sigh.

She could feel it, a huff of breath stirring the tendrils of hair at her ears. He must be as frustrated as she was.

"What time is it?"

"Just past midnight." He pressed a quick kiss on the side of her neck, moved back to rubbing her shoulders, moving the fabric of her night clothes aside without asking.

"Augh! Why did you let me turn in so early? I can't go back to sleep now."

"You needed the rest."

Flat, solid, stern. There was no arguing with that tone.

He finished his ministrations, gently restored her top, moved beside her and scrutinised her profile.

Silence filled the room while she stretched and rolled her shoulders back.

He wouldn't ask again, not since she brushed him off the first time, but she could see he was waiting for her to offer details.

How could she tell her husband that she had increasingly vivid visions of his death? A world where he'd been murdered trying to protect her?

And more: in that world Aurore had never hung up her lance. She still got dragged into battles against minor gods born from desperation. She still got called on automatically, to solve any problem: personal, and political, and all the ones in-between.

She'd never even made a true home.

All Haurchefant knew of her visions was that they involved danger to him - which was an understandable fear.

Garlemald's appetite for conquest was insatiable; the Twelve knew it was a question of when, not if, Ishgard itself would be threatened.

The abuses the Garleans carried out during each acquisition were notorious, especially against those they deemed a threat: any person of an age to take up arms against them, and then their families threatened in turn to ensure the savages’ obedience.

Battered and near-collapse from the centuries-long struggle against the dragons, and the territories lost to the ice since, it had long been decided that the Holy See of Ishgard would surrender to the Garleans, in exchange for the citizens' safety. What population and structure remained had to be protected at all costs.

What the Garleans did to Limsa Lominsa was a clear lesson in how they would answer to resistance.

Aurore hadn't been able to go near the sea since.

There was something more to tonight's vision, though. She scowled to herself, trying to order the brief impressions she had-

It was as though she'd been watching her life - her real life, settled with Haurchefant in their home - contained in a bubble for her to study from the outside. Beautiful, isolated, fragile.

And there was something else: a voice she felt she should recognise, inviting, commanding...invoking. A summoning.

Summoning her.

She shivered, and nearly jumped a malm when Haurchefant slipped his arms around her waist.

"If you cannot speak it, perhaps you'll allow me to offer a distraction?"

Willing her heart to slow down again, she turned in his arms and tried to muster a smile. From the quirk in Haurchefant's eyebrows, he wasn't fooled.

"Perhaps…yes."

And she let him pull her back to bed.

 

***

 

The sky was tinged with pre-dawn grey when she slipped out of their room. Sneaking a glance back inside before closing the door, it was a relief to see Haurchefant still asleep. Explaining herself was a complication she couldn't face right now.

Aurore hated keeping secrets from him. She had never needed to before, but it was entirely possible that telling Haurchefant the details of her vision would create the exact conditions needed for it to come true.

Jumping in to protect her from attack at the cost of his own life was so exactly the kind of thing he'd do that she was profoundly glad he hadn't been put in that position in this life.

This life?

...She was definitely going mad. "This life" was her life here and now, her real life. There was no other.

She hunched over some coffee in the kitchen and wondered whether it was safe, or even possible, to contact the remaining Scions. She didn’t know if they'd had any success going to ground before the Garleans took control; didn’t know if they even lived.

Before moving to Ishgard, her visions gifted by the Echo had only shown the past - her own or other people's - so why was it behaving differently now?

From what little she knew of the Echo, ignoring its warnings would spell disaster. There was no alternative but to contact the Scions once more.

Perhaps she should search for Urianger first - she could certainly trust him to be discreet - and if he couldn't help, he'd at least know where to point her next.

It had been a long time since she'd picked up her lance, and longer still since she'd left Ishgard, but now she’d decided on a course of action she felt calmer already.

The kitchen was very quiet, the profound silence after a storm when snow blanketed everything afresh, and the denizens of the city had not begun their errands yet.

How long had it been, exactly?

Her temples throbbed with a fresh wave of pain.

("Something's very wrong. I can't find her on the Source, but she couldn't be anywhere else!")

How long had she been living here? When was the last time she saw any land outside of the Holy See?

The weak sunlight was too bright, hurting her eyes.

("I must - nnh - must draw more from the Tower...")

She must know. Surely she couldn't forget something as simple as that. Her knuckles whitened around her cup, fingernails scratching into the glaze.

("Wait, I can sense her now. A little. If I focus I can just reach her-")

Was she even supposed to be here?

Was Haurchefant supposed to be dead after all? The foundation of her heart, her dearest one-

And then Haurchefant himself strolled into the kitchen, and fate flowed into the correct channel once more.

As she smiled up in greeting, she saw relief washing over him.

"Ah, my tricky wife! I wanted to bring you coffee in bed this morning, but you sneaked out ahead of me.”

“I am good at sneaking, true.”

“I'll have to keep a close eye on you if I want to treat you again."

Haurchefant kept his tone light and made an exaggerated show of looking her up and down, but he still couldn't mask his concern. Did he think she could no longer take care of herself? Did he honestly think she would come to harm in her own home?

Aurore drank her tepid coffee, a fresh wave of unease rolling in her gut.

She couldn't remember what she'd been doing before Haurchefant entered the room.

 

***

 

In another world the Crystal Exarch staggered and fell to his knees. Only the support of his staff kept him from pitching onto his face entirely.

He quickly checked that the entrance to his Ocular was still barred and he was still alone, and only then did he try to draw breath, wheezing and choking around the crystal gripping his lung.

Slowly levering himself up to stand, he eventually caught his breath again. He could sense the crackling, aether-saturated air gradually stabilising again; power earthing itself and flowing into the structure of the Tower.

This attempt had cost a lot, forcing him to draw heavily on the Tower's resources, and payment would be as precise as it was relentless.

Sometimes he fancied he could feel each creeping inch of himself being taken by the crystal, but of course the process was far too slow to tell, really, not unless he had to use power at a cataclysmic rate.

He tried not to dwell on the myriad ways such a disaster could appear that would require exactly that sacrifice from him.

He went to one of the Tower's consoles in another chamber, hoping to bury his fears in action and find some clues in the new data at the same time.

At first glance it seemed next to useless, as garbled as the last attempts, but a chance similarity caught his eye. It was as though the base information he'd collected from the Source had been scrambled - but not at random. There was some internal logic to it; the same pattern as the original, but flowing in different directions.

A cypher, he realised.

And every soul on the First depended on him finding the key.