Work Text:
You have faced interviews, debriefings, and even interrogations that were less intense than the series of questions Y’shtola heaps on you. In the end, however, she gives you the same baffled-but-permissive look of someone who discovers that their closest friend enjoys eating salted licorice, and says: “I trust you to be careful, but you need only say the word and I will tear that lump of cancer he calls a heart from his rib cage and feed it to him.”
You smile wearily as you climb the stairs to your room. It’s good to have friends.
Groaning, you force open the heavy double doors to your suite and hold them there, your back and shoulders popping. For a moment your suite looks empty: no ghosts, no Ascians, no maidservants.
Then, between one blink and the next, Emet-Selch stalks out of a pulsing swirl of shadow wearing an expression of mingled triumph and immense irritation, his hands curling into fists.
“You have no idea how much I’ve been dying to get you alone.” he snaps.
You honestly can’t tell if he wants to pull you into an embrace or wrap his hands around your throat.
You just look at him. At this point, you are so tired that you can’t even bring yourself to make a facial expression. For all you’ve been alternately searching out and dreading this exact moment, you no longer care what he says or does next. It’s not that you don’t, it’s that you can’t: you are all used up, out of words. If he wants you alone so much, he can have you just as you are: unhappy, bone-weary, stupid.
Uncertainty flits across his face as you let the doors swing shut behind you and take three plodding steps forward. He opens his mouth to speak, but whatever he is about to say comes to an abrupt halt as you rest your face against his throat. You can’t exactly explain why you do it, even to yourself.
Emet-Selch goes very still, hands hovering at your sides, and you marvel that he is at an absolute loss for words. Amusement bleeds into the misery aching sharply in your chest. You wish you were more alert so you could enjoy the moment better. Don't know what to do with this, do you? you think. Poor thing. I ruined your speech.
He can see your heart. Right now your heart is saying, We both have things to scream at one another, but right now I need this more. Please.
You close your eyes and breathe in: skin, amber aftershave, smoke. A hand brushes yours, and you grasp his first two fingers. The hand curls, hesitates, then slips into yours after a moment.
He sighs heavily, shoulders sagging. “Don’t think for a minute that this lets you off the hook, you ridiculous creature.”
Emet-Selch pulls you further into the room. Your feet feel clumsy, but you manage not to stumble. Soon you are sitting, the mattress creaking under you. As you begin untying your surcoat, he frowns at your muddy boots. The laces span all the way up your shin, rough motion having yanked the wet knots tight. You couldn’t unlace them now if someone put a blade to your throat.
He sits next to you and snaps his fingers, and then your boots are at the foot of the bed, as dry and clean as the day you bought them. At first, your exhausted brain can’t connect the sequence of events, and all you can do is gape at your sore toes until it catches up with you and you lean against his shoulder with a wordless, grateful sound.
You drift off. In the dream, the sky is just beginning to darken, the first stars peeking out. Enormous pink clouds drift by, brilliant against the branches of a yellow-leafed tree. You gaze up and up and up. Then you are traipsing through an entire forest of similar yellow trees, following a tall, slender someone in traveling robes with his lavender hair done up in a braid. Hades is trudging somewhere behind you-–every time you turn to look at him, you see nothing but endless, empty forest, but you can hear him stomping through underbrush and grumbling when you turn away again.
You laugh suddenly and lift your hand over your head, thumb and middle finger pressed together. “Hey look, Hades, I can do it too-–”
You snap your fingers and seven tiny orange birds, quite fearless and accustomed to people, swoop down and settle on your arm, eagerly clamoring for fruit.
You blink awake.
“Do what?” Hades asks. That look he is giving you, amused and curious, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he doesn’t quite smile: that is not Emet-Selch, that is Hades.
In the handful of minutes you were asleep, he put your gear in a tidy pile. You’re still propped against his shoulder, dressed in only your smallclothes. You hadn’t realized how tight and pinchy your outer attire felt until you weren’t wearing it anymore.
“Oh.” You try to find the words to explain the dream, but in the end you give up and simply shake your head.
“Twit,” he says, not unfondly, and you move to burrow against his side, but he leans away and takes your chin in one hand, his grip just on the verge of being painful. “Oh no, you don’t. Not until you explain yourself.”
For an absurd second, you think he’s still talking about your dream, but one look at his face tells you it’s not that he’s so keen on investigating.
You are not outraged. You do not slap his hand away. You feel remarkably unconcerned. Underneath it all is a dangerous urge to giggle. This is a man who knows how to glower. He is truly giving you his best work, and he has no idea that the pressure of his fingers is the only thing keeping you awake enough for coherent speech.
You lift your eyebrows, forcing your heavy eyes open wider, and try to coordinate your scattered and fragmented thoughts. It’s hard; all you can hold onto is the idea that this conversation is going in the wrong order: he should be explaining himself to you.
“... Explain myself?”
“Oh for–-make an effort, hero. That look you gave me when I arrived at your meeting.”
Oh. With sudden and unexpected clarity, it occurs to you that prior to entering the Ocular, Hades hadn’t the slightest clue what the group of you were discussing. It really could have been anything. All he knew was that you were noticeably upset about something, and then he’d caught you talking about him behind his back with Y’shtola not long after.
The curiosity must be eating him alive.
After all the recent distress he’s caused you, his agitation is a small but definite comfort. You can’t help it; a little grin tugs at your lips, and Hades’s glare turns from annoyed to thunderous.
“Answers. Now.”
You squirm out of his grasp and take his hands. Your own hands already feel far away. “Hades. Hades. It’s not that you don’t excel at being frightening, you’re very scary, but I am on the verge of passing out face-first in your lap-–”
He growls your name, baring his teeth around the word.
“I depart tomorrow evening at seven. Please.”
It’s an indescribable triumph to watch him sigh, relent, and roll his eyes-–not just an irritated glance upward, but a full journey from one side to the other, to show you the sheer extent of his exasperation. “Fine, you tiresome–-”
“Heehee. I am tiresome. Very tired some. Thank you. I fought so many sin eaters, Hades. I ran for malms and malms. I’m so tired.”
His face softens ever-so-slightly. “I know exactly how many you fought. Did you think I wasn’t watching?”
“Aw.” You smile goofily, touched, tethered to tenuous reality by his hands in yours. Then you frown. “You did nothing to help.”
“Of course I didn’t-–”
“But you swore in front of all of us-–” you babble on, swaying, listing to one side, but he steadies you before you can lean too far. You feel drunk, words tumbling from you. “You swore your fealty when you donned the red mask. ‘To bear rapture and sorrow, to live, die, and know-–’”
Hades claps a hand over your mouth. Too late.
You can do nothing but stare at his stricken face. This is so much worse than laughing at him.
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” he snaps, attempting his usual condescending irritation, but the words are strangled, his eyes bright. “I know my duty.”
You pull his hand away, only to discover that you can’t think of a single thing to say. What could you say? You are lightheaded with embarrassment, that slow-stretching, miserable understanding of words spoken that you can’t possibly take back, of a wound caused entirely from your own clumsiness.
At the same time, something dark and nameless and bitter rises in the back of your throat upon hearing that word: duty. It’s a completely foreign feeling, as distressing as it is confusing, and yet it aches like an old hurt, of a grudge carried around in your heart for years-–
And you don’t want to know. You are too tired. You turn away from it.
You watch Hades watching you, his new-old pain fresh on his face, and wonder if he can see it in you, just how incapable you are of enduring one more horrible thing today. As his eyes drift closed, he lets out a long sigh through his nose. When they open again, they are tolerant and tired, and you actually tremble in relief.
“Just go to sleep,” he says and pokes the center of your chest with one finger, and that’s all you need. You sink back into a sanctuary of pillows and the world winks out.
Your next dream is about a series of earthquakes continually disrupting the lives of a village of extremely sensitive spider people. They are peaceful but easily frightened, their pale bodies nearly transparent and seeming to glow from within. Since you can’t stop the earthquakes, you help them with their webs instead, cleaning out rubble and mending the broken strands-–
And then you are awake, on your knees in bed, with half the contents of your saddlebag spread out over the duvet: materia orbs, coffee biscuits, a box of fishing lures, a slightly cracked cluster of gray quartz, and a deck of triple triad cards. There is a krakka root still clutched in your hand.
You stare at the vegetable, uncomprehending. You don’t feel as though you’ve slept at all; you are swimmy-headed, your ears ringing. It’s still daylight out.
Then Hades's voice, cheerfully incredulous: “What exactly are you doing?”
“I was–-” You drop the root and turn your head to look at him, blinking heavy eyelids. He has not budged from where he made himself comfortable at your writing desk with a glass of red wine and-–is that your–-oh gods it is-–
Your journal.
It is your fantastic luck that you have been too overwhelmed with everything to update it recently.
“HEY-–” you snarl and stagger to your feet to rush over and snatch it back, but he presses one hand against your chest, keeping you at arm’s length with a great show of nonchalance. You sense something jarring keeping you held at bay that isn’t just the strength of his hand, but you couldn’t begin to guess what it might be–-only that you feel off-balance, like you’ve narrowly avoided walking face-first into a window.
“Oh, don’t be cross. It’s not like you have anything else to read in here,” he says calmly.
He doesn’t lift his eyes from your journal, apparently interested in something, the book held easily in his free hand. Your stomach tightens. What part is he reading? Your eyes are drawn to his thumb, held between the pages, and something about its placement makes you blush in spite of everything.
“Did you know there’s a LIBRARY in the Crystarium?” you bellow. “FLOOR TO CEILING SHELVES.”
“Yes, I was aware.” Hades finally directs his attention back to you, giving you a long look from under his brows. “It’s fascinating, this glimpse into how the altruistic half lives. Only heroes ever keep journals, you know. We monsters never have the time.” He smiles beatifically. “Besides, I won’t find any literature about me in the library, will I?”
“You won’t find any in there about you either.”
Dismayed, he gasps sharply at the book, as if it had personally betrayed him, before lightly tossing it back onto the desk with a sigh. “Aw. You’ve spoiled it.”
“Good.”
You glance from your journal to the chronometer sitting next to it and make a short, despairing groan. You were asleep for thirteen whole minutes.
Stress. It must be stress. Gods know you’ve carried around enough of it for the past day and a half. For weeks. You’ve been mocked, tormented, and teased by an immortal smirking villain traipsing around in Garlean finery. You’ve witnessed horrors while running through the mud and rain. Your bones hum now all the time, even the tiny ones in your ears. It’s no wonder. Anyone would crack under such strain.
You expect Hades to remove his hand from your sternum. Instead, that strange invisible force between you dissipates, and he rises smoothly to his feet. Sliding a hand down your chest and side, he pulls you close enough to feel his breath against your face.
“You leave me with no choice but to find other ways to amuse myself.”
Your breath catches. His thumb, the same one that besmirched your journal, strokes where your hip and thigh meet. Your face grows even hotter.
So he was interested in doing that again?
Hades studies your expression. “You’re… surprised. Would this have anything to do with a certain subject you’re disinclined to discuss with me?”
He arches his brows pointedly, his face pitiless, and you know he will not grant you another reprieve from this conversation. Were you not so bleary, still dizzy from your flight from the bed, you might be able to approach the topic with some manner of decorum, but it’s difficult now to pull the words from the tangled knot of hurt and frustration and embarrassment. All you can think about is how intolerably stupid, artless, and clingy you’re going to sound.
“You don’t know.” Just saying it out loud is beyond mortifying, but it completely baffles you that, between the two of you, he wouldn’t know the protocol for whatever it is the two of you are doing together. “You honestly don’t know?”
Hades widens his eyes in exasperated impatience, head tilting. “Noooo. In spite of my ability to perceive the wounded resentment roiling in your comparatively comelier bosom, I’m not a mind-reader.”
He removes his hand from your hip and folds his arms, waiting. While most of you is relieved to be able to think clearer, part of you misses the contact now that it’s gone, the skin there exposed to the air again-–you’d almost become used to it.
“You were gone when I woke up.” You spread your hands, let them drop to your sides again. “I didn’t know what that meant.”
There, it’s out, finally. Hades stares at you, utterly befuddled. Whatever he was expecting you to say, it wasn’t that.
“Yes?” He blinks once, all polite confusion. “Did you not think I would return?”
“You sure as hell didn’t leave me any reason to think you would.”
“Is that all?” His brows furrow upward, a disbelieving grin tugging at his lips. He starts laughing helplessly, unable to contain it. “Oh, hero…”
Abruptly you are engulfed in an insufferable hug, your cheek pressed against one of his stupid gaudy medals. Jaw clenched, you remain stiff, your arms limp at your sides as Hades sighs theatrically and rocks you from side to side.
“The irony,” he says. “You waste all that time demanding explanations for my visits, and now you ask why I have gone.”
You should probably be more concerned with what he thought you thought–-fairytale monsters and their bloody ceaseless scheming–-but right now the idea of chasing yet more suspicions in circles makes you want to lie down and weep. Instead, you address the other oliphant in the room, struggling to keep your voice calm:
“You wouldn’t be the first one to bed the hero and then bounce.”
“What?” It comes out droll and unoffended, sounding like ‘wot’, and you want to grab him by the lapels of his coat and shake him. “‘Bounce?’ Whyever would I?”
Hades isn’t teasing you-–or, at least, he’s only teasing you a little, the way he might with a child who came to him with some silly doubt or fear. What roots your feet to the spot is the realization that bouncing hadn’t even occurred to him. It’s absurd, to the point where he can’t even bring himself to be insulted by your assumption.
Which would be cause for relief if not for the exhausting fact that you carried all that pain and confusion for a day and a half, only to have done Hades a horrible discourtesy in doing so, lumping him in with the handful of others who dropped you the second you weren’t interesting anymore. Stories and bragging rights acquired, they’d drink for free on tales about bedding the Hero of the Realm, and you’d stuff your lacerated feelings down and convince yourself that it was fine, that “real” relationships weren’t in the cards for someone like you.
It dawns on you that you are yelling at him while clad in your smallclothes. Somehow this is what finally destroys the tattered fragments of your composure. You fist your hands and thump them once-–not hard-–against his shoulders, but he doesn’t frown or even wince, simply listening.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m not good at this, I don’t know how it goes-–”
Arms still clasped loosely around your waist, Hades draws back to gaze at you in wonder, as though he’d captured some rare and astonishing breed of perfect idiot.
“You were actually worried that I would be satisfied with just one pleasant morning,” he says, pronouncing the words in amazed delight, his voice trembling with suppressed laughter.
“Yes,” you deadpan. “That is exactly what I was worried about. Congratulations, you figured it out.”
“You wanton little thing.”
“No, not wanton!” You push him arm’s length away, and he lets you without resistance, though his fingertips drag against your skin when you draw back. “Incredibly confused, Hades! Did you plan that morning? Because I didn’t plan that morning, and it was wonderful-–”
His jaw drops in mock-surprise. Smiling, he touches his fingers to his lips as if you’d blurted something scandalous and he was warding off a blush. You cut off whatever teasing nonsense he’s about to say with a sharp motion of your hand.
“--but I had no bloody idea how you felt about it.”
He holds his palms up. “All right, all right-–”
“I thought I did something wrong,” you add, hating yourself equally for saying it and also for how fretful you sound.
“Oh, you idiot,” he croons. “You nuisance, you sweet fool, you’re actually going to make me say it, aren’t you? Very well: You did nothing wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact. You needed rest. I had things to do. I honestly thought we would talk more later.”
“You did? It’s just–-I thought-–I didn’t–-”
“Take a breath, dear.”
You thump his shoulder again. “I keep knowing things. I know your real name and the thing about the orange blossoms and–-” You glance away guiltily, not wanting to bring up the red mask memory again so soon. “Sometimes I say things and you stare at me like, like-–"
He shakes his head no firmly. “You rend my heart to pieces without knowing you’re doing it all the time,” he says, taking your hands in his. “but it’s one of your charms.”
“W-what?”
“I won’t say that it doesn’t ache at times, but it’s not something I’d ever flee from.”
You gape at him, awash in relief and confusion. You simply have no idea what to do with this information. Wearing a strange, barely-there smile, he strokes his thumbs across your palms.
“All you see are dreams and whispers,” he says, and the pain in his voice now isn’t unlike when he’d described the history of his star: Just fragments and fleeting memories of an achingly familiar world. “But it’s better than nothing.”
You stare at your joined hands without really seeing them and let out a long sigh. You wish you could collapse with that sigh, like a puppet with its strings cut.
“You are so fucking confusing.”
“No, I’m not.” He says it in the exact same tone he used when you told him he snored.
“You are.”
“Careful. I can keep this up for much longer than you can.”
You don’t know if he’s referring to his immortality or the fact that you feel like you only slept a few minutes. You could almost fall asleep right here, standing up.
You stab a finger against his chest. “I need you to be clear with me. I’m not… good. At people. I’ve tried. I’m not.” To your horror, you find yourself blinking back tears, your voice rough. “I’m so terrible at people.”
You expect snickering. You expect teasing. Instead, he takes the hand that prodded him and looks at it with an odd sort of wistful pleasure, and you're struck once again with the uncanny notion that he's missed exactly how you're behaving, as impulsive and foolish as you feel.
“Not an onze of poetry in you," he sighs. "Actually, I find it refreshing that you’d ask."
"Oh."
"My intentions are that I have not yet begun to kiss you-–unless, of course, you decide that it’s closure you crave after all-–”
You frown at this man you’ve known for almost a month. Hades is giving you the opportunity to be all business again: to call him Emet-Selch and talk to him only in meetings, to forget he ever touched you or looked at you like you were anything worth cherishing. You sense that it would hurt you both if you ended it, but he could use the pain as an excuse to put you aside and out of the way.
And you would have to smother it when you remembered something new about him or the life you once shared. It would be like choking every time.
You should. It would be the rational thing to do, for everyone’s sake. It would certainly prevent even worse pain later.
Maybe the person he keeps remembering would be strong enough to break it now.
“No,” you whisper, not looking at him, tightening your hands in his. “Stay.”
“That’s the second time you’ve asked me to. Such an endearing distraction you are.” You catch a flash of a fragile, elated grin before he draws you close and kisses you. Even as your mind clicks over to somewhere soft and quiet, you can’t shake the notion that you’ve sealed some sort of doomed pact, and Hades knows it. “But I’m glad. That would have been quite an unsatisfactory end to our tale.”
Gloved fingertips trace the small of your back. You are too worn out to shiver, but a weak, almost obligatory tingle blooms there anyway.
“Are the histrionics over?” he asks. “Have I mollified your worries, answered all your questions?”
There is one maddening one left, one you can’t help but fixate on:
“Why didn’t you stay for breakfast?” You grimace at him doubtfully. “Weren’t you supposed to stay for breakfast?”
Hades makes a groaning chuckle that almost sounds pained, and all you can do is stand there, dumbfounded and dismayed, as he rests his head against your shoulder, the rest of him drooping as if suddenly very tired.
“Hero. Heeero. You dim little bulb, I don’t eat breakfast.”
Put like that, it seems so simple. “... Oh.”
“‘Oh,’” he parrots as he pulls you close again, and you bury your hot face in his coat.
“I think I would be happy if the earth opened up and swallowed me,” you mutter.
“Well, I wouldn’t be. So you simply have no choice but to stay in my arms.”
“Mh. If I must.”
“I insist.”
Your bed is only a few feet away. You are overwrought and overwhelmed, with a new mission looming, and if Hades is good at anything, he is good at making you not think. For whatever reason, you can sense he is leaving what comes next up to you.
You press your face against his throat, mumbling with genuine regret: “It’s unfortunate I’m not up to being more of a distraction.”
“Anyone can see that you are cross-eyed with exhaustion, my dear. You wouldn’t enjoy it, and neither would I.” He gives you a slow, anticipatory smile that makes you feel more than a bit giddy. “I can wait, for a time.”
“Oh, good,” you manage wanly, and turn to look at your bed, with its tangled sheets and all your clutter spread everywhere, the lone krakka root still on your pillow.
“Ah yes,” he says. “You were going to tell me what pressing need led you to decorate your bed so.”
“Job dreams,” you grumble.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Hades lift a hand to snap his fingers, presumably to transport everything back into your saddlebag, but you tangle your fingers with his.
“No, no. I got it, just a minute-–”
That hand captures yours instead and squeezes. He grins victoriously, as if your hand was a rare prize he’d tricked you into letting him steal. “Don’t trust me to do it right?”
“Rich talk coming from the man who took a nosedive into my journal the second I was out!”
His smile only widens unapologetically. Yanking your hand free, you grab your bag-–which is among your pillows for some reason instead of under the bed where you usually keep it-–and begin hastily stuffing items into it.
“I just want to do it, all right? I. I have a system.”
When you tie the bag closed and stow it away, you find him watching you with his fingers curled against his smiling lips.
“Of course you do,”he whispers.
Removing his coat, Hades drapes it on the back of a nearby chair and crawls into bed with you. You flop onto your back and he crawls on top, letting himself be a smug, dead weight as he pins your hands on either side of your head. With anyone else, it would be intolerably constrictive, but his is a soothing, compelling pressure, for all he smiles as though he were getting away with something.
“Allow me to put this in vernacular you can appreciate,” he says. “Your mission, and I insist you take it, is sleep. Naught else is your concern. No thinking. No talking. Drift.”
It is remarkably easy to let yourself go slack underneath him. What a novel feeling, this gift he’s given you. You couldn’t possibly lift a finger to help anyone like this; you have an Ascian sprawled on you like some grotesque sleep demon of yore. No decisions to make. No obligations. When was the last time you felt like this?
You lift your chin, but your lips miss his, and you end up kissing the end of his nose. Chuckling, Hades gives you a look of almost agonized tenderness before he rests his head in the space between your neck and shoulder. His breath is a comforting rhythm, his heartbeat steady and strong. As you float toward another dream, an image creeps into your mind: a stone keeping a scrap of paper from being tugged away by rough winds.