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As it turns out, word tends to spread very quickly in Vaugaurde.
Well, okay, you suppose you should’ve seen that coming. Way back when you and your family were venturing around searching for the orbs to open Dormont’s House, it wasn’t long before locals everywhere started referring to you all as the saviors. As far as you can recall, that wasn’t even a name one of you came up with, but rather something a local called you that spread like fire all over the country.
But that was a long time ago (...at least, you think it was…), and that was different, because that’s when everyone was hoping and wishing for someone to come save them. Unexpected as it may have been, it was entirely unsurprising.
But this…
You’re not even a quarter of the way to Bambouche to reunite Bonnie with their sister, and everywhere you turn, people are thanking you for the defeat of the King. Dormont, sure, you were expecting the praise, but…
You’re not even trying to parade around the country like you’re taking a victory lap. In fact, it was Bonnie that insisted you all find somewhere to sleep for the night before the trek back to their home.
“We don’t want Frin meeting Nille when they’re still feeling sad and sick and hungry!” They’d insisted, arms crossed over their chest and a pout on their face, and they’re pretty lucky to be so hard to say no to when they get like that.
Originally, Mirabelle had suggested another sleepover at Dormont’s clock tower.
Unfortunately for your diminished impulse control, the no that came out of your mouth at the suggestion was a lot sharper and angrier than you intended it to be. You over-corrected instantly, put on the same smile you put on through dozens and dozens of loops before at the very same suggestion, but before you could even open your mouth, the rest of your family exchanged sad glances with each other and agreed that it’d probably be best if you slept somewhere else tonight.
You hate when they do that.
So now you’re here, walking aimlessly in the direction of Bambouche, looking for anywhere you could possibly take respite. You’re still exhausted, still hungry, still feel a little bit like bursting into tears, but you’re here. You’re here. You’re with them, and you’re here.
“Oh! There’s something!” Isabeau’s voice rings out from beside you, snapping you out of your little trance. You look to where he’s pointing, and your face flushes in embarrassment when you realize everyone else already stopped walking.
(You wonder, at the back of your mind, if he only said anything because he knew you weren’t paying attention.)
(You blush at the thought.)
It’s a brightly lit inn with a hand carved welcome sign and a Change God-shaped wind chime hanging above the entrance.
“Oh! This place looks lovely!” Mirabelle claps her hands together, and turns to face you. “How about it, Siffrin? Do you want to stop here?”
They care about you so, so much. It makes your chest ache.
The words aren’t coming right now, so you just nod your head, hiding your face as best as you can into your cloak.
(Out of the corner of your eye, you notice Isabeau smiling at the gesture.)
You follow everyone inside, and shuffle yourself towards the back of the group. You were never much of a talker when you needed to make sleeping arrangements during the journey anyway, so nobody thinks anything of it.
“Hi!” Mirabelle cheerfully calls out to the person sitting at the front desk. “We’re-”
“Saviors!” They reply before Mirabelle can finish her sentence, and they jump out of their chair so quickly that it nearly falls to the ground. “Thank you so much for visiting my humble inn! What do I owe the pleasure?”
“Oh, no need for formality!” Mirabelle waves her hands in the air, and begins shuffling through her dress pockets. “We’re just looking for a place to sleep tonight, and were wondering if-”
“The two-bedroom suite! Yes! Of course!” the interrupting innkeeper says, and opens a drawer on their side of the desk to look for the right set of keys. “Here you are! On the house! Anything for you saviors!” They wave the keys in Mirabelle’s face, maybe a little too excitedly, and she stumbles backwards a step before taking the keys from them. She’s saying something else, probably about insisting on paying the full price, but you’re already starting to zone out again.
A full suite means there must be a shower, right?
Stars, you feel so gross. You can’t even remember the last time you took a shower. The bathroom on the third floor of Dormont’s House didn’t have one, and even if it did, you’re sure Odile would’ve yelled at you for wasting time had you tried to use it during any of your loops. You’re also not even sure if you’d even stay clean if you used a shower during the loops, because you’re not entirely sure how bodily hygiene would even work in the case of a reset.
You don’t want to think about it.
You shake your head to try and shake those thoughts away, and you mindlessly tap Odile, the person closest to your reach, on the shoulder.
She turns to you instantaneously. “Yeah, Siffrin? What’s happening?”
You give her a peace sign and playfully stick out your tongue, a silent way to communicate that you’ll be right back.
Before the loops, everyone got used to this little habit of yours, because you’d also do the same thing when you needed to find someplace to take a nap, but for some reason this time the gesture just makes Odile frown. Instead of just nodding and letting you go, she turns and taps Mirabelle on the shoulder, which stops her in her frantic conversation with the innkeeper.
“Hold on, Mirabelle- Siffrin’s going somewhere.”
They all turn to face you. Even Bonnie, who’d wandered off to investigate some of the lobby’s decorations, turns their heel and looks towards you. They don’t mean to, you’re sure they don’t, but it feels like they’re all staring right into your soul.
Ah, right.
You probably shouldn’t wander off without telling anyone where you’re going anymore.
“I was gonna call first dibs on the shower,” you shrug as nonchalantly as you can, and then give them all finger guns. “I feel like I haven’t showered in months.”
Nobody laughs. Not even Isabeau, who just gives you a sad look.
Oops. Probably shouldn’t joke so lightly about the loops either, then. Gotcha.
You shuffle awkwardly to the front of the group so the innkeeper can hand you the spare key to the suite, and dash off before you can manage any more social blunders. You can hear your family murmuring to each other as you walk away, and you can only hope that they’re not talking about you, because you hate it when people worry about you behind your back.
Thankfully, the suite is a quick find, and the bathroom is just a quick shoot-off from one of the two bedrooms. You undress quickly, carelessly tossing your clothes onto one of the beds by means of claiming it as yours, and you turn the shower on, hopping in before you can even give the water time to warm up.
Stars, the water hitting your skin alone makes you want to cry. It’s not that it hurts, or that it’s too cold, or the stream is too weak, it’s the fact that it’s touching your skin. Something is touching your skin. As more and more loops went by, you started feeling less like a person with a physical body and more like a marionette being dragged along by a cruel puppeteer, so the physical reminders that you’re here are a lot more appreciated than you’re willing to let on.
And that’s the other thing, too.
You want physical reminders. You want touch.
You need it, as a matter of fact, but it’s not like that’s something you could ever say out loud. You need to be touched so badly that it makes your stomach hurt? Mortifying. Disgusting. You could never.
You suppose the soap and warm water will have to do for now. They’re nice sensations, and something you genuinely haven’t felt since before the loops, so you’re genuinely grateful for them in that regard. You tilt your head upwards towards the shower head to let the warm water stream down your face, and you let yourself zone out for a long time. You’re not entirely sure for how long, since your sense of time passing has been permanently damaged, but you’re not thinking of anything at all, which is a first in a very long time.
You’re humming to yourself when you finally exit the shower. You’re not sure if it’s a song you heard somewhere long ago or a melody you’re making up on the spot, but it’s nice to have a song in your head again. It means you’re finally starting to relax.
You wrap one towel around your chest and you ruffle your hair dry with another, not paying much attention when you bump the bathroom door open with your shoulder, and-
“Oh! Sorry! Sorry!” Isabeau yelps, and you throw the towel aside that you’d been using to dry your hair. He’s got both of his hands covering his eyes, head dropped towards the floor, and he doesn’t even need to be looking in your direction for you to see that he’s blushing harder than you’ve ever seen him. “We just, you know, decided on sleeping arrangements! While you were showering! And you know, I didn’t want to go in there and bother you to let you know that we decided, because we figured you’d be okay if I slept in here with you because that’s how we’ve always done it, but I really wanted to ask and make sure, and then when you got out you started humming, and I got distracted because I thought it was cute, because you haven’t in a while, and, uh, I mean, not cute, you know, yeah, like, happy! You sounded happy, and now I’m here, and you’re here, and you’re naked, and oh crab, I’m so sorry, Sif, I can wait in the other room if-”
You start laughing.
You don’t mean to, but it starts bubbling out of your chest and you just can’t help yourself. It’s a genuine, happy laugh, and that alone is enough to stop Isabeau in his rambling tracks. He lifts his head from the ground, blushing, but he still has both of his hands covering his eyes.
“It’s okay, Isa” you reply. “I don’t mind sleeping in here with you.” You pause, and then snicker as you add, “...and you can look, that’s okay too. I’m not completely naked.”
Well, yeah. You’re still wearing the towel. So that’s kind of true, isn’t it?
“O-Oh! Okay, if you’re sure!” Isabeau splutters, somehow blushing even harder, and you laugh to yourself as you go to pick up the discarded clothes you tossed on the bed. You plan to slip back into the bathroom and change again, but before you can take another step, Isabeau gasps from behind you.
Okay, now you’re the one blushing. You knew Isabeau would start acting a little bolder after he confessed to you, but you never thought-
“Sif…”
…Oh, that actually sounded a lot sadder than you were expecting it to.
“Isa?” You frown, and turn to face him. “What’s wrong?”
The question catches in your throat when you spot your reflection in the mirror on the wall beside him.
Scars, scars, scars. All over your face. All over your arms. All over the visible parts of your chest. All over your body.
You recognize those scars. You recognize those… deaths.
The sight of your own reflection makes you want to throw up. Your heart is starting to beat so loud in your chest that it makes your ears ring. If Isabeau is talking to you, you can’t hear a word he’s saying anymore. Your legs feel like jelly, and there’s something in you that wants to collapse to the floor and curl up until you disappear.
You thought you were free? A voice that’s not quite yours screams in your head. You want it to shut up. You thought you could *ever* be free? The voice screams louder, and for a lack of a hat rim you start tugging on your hair.
Of course you’re not free. You’ll never be free. You may have gotten your way for now, and your party may have forgiven you for the horrible things you’ve done, but you never had the choice to be free. The Universe leads, and you can only follow. You tried to change things, but you cannot. This is your punishment. You will always be broken. You will always be damaged. You are disgusting. If they see you this way, they will leave you. They will see how long you forced them to love you. They will hate you. They will leave you. They will leave you.
Your head hurts. You keep pulling and pulling at your hair, but it still hurts, the voice won’t shut up, you need the voice to shut up, you keep pulling and pulling and pulling and hoping that it’ll do something, that if you keep hurting yourself you can hurt the voice too, you-
“...frin!”
The sound of Isabeau’s voice snaps you out of it. The voice in your head is gone, and all the pain that remains is the pain on your head from nearly ripping your hair out. You look towards the mirror again, but now all you see is Isabeau, standing in between you and the mirror in a protective stance, arms out wide to block your view of it. He’s worried about you, clear as day, but there’s also something soft in the way that he looks at you that has your chest aching in a different way.
Always by your side.
“...on me, Sif, okay? Just focus on me.”
You meet his eyes, and some of the worry in them melts away immediately. For reasons you’re not ready to admit out loud quite yet, that melts away some of your worry, too.
You breathe in, and out. You focus on the soft features of his face as your breathing slowly returns to normal, decidedly not thinking about anything else, nope, not at all, and a shy giggle escapes him when he must notice the blush on your face. You try to hide, find there’s nowhere for your face to go in your bath towel, and Isabeau laughs softly again.
You’ll never admit to him how comforting the sound of his laughter is. You’ll take it to your grave.
“All good?” Isabeau asks, and you know he’s not just referring to this very moment, but…
“Yeah,” you reply. For now, you don’t reply. “All good.”
He frowns and takes another step closer to you, arms stiff at his sides. “Sif, are these from…”
He doesn’t want to say it. You don’t, either, but right now it feels like you don’t exactly have a choice.
“Yeah,” you reply stiffly, and he doesn’t even give you time to cover it up with but it’s fine, because the look on his face is breaking your heart to pieces. He eyes you up and down, eyes growing sadder as the beats pass, and you wonder in the back of your mind if he’s trying to count them all up to figure out the total number of your loops.
Your stomach drops.
“Sif…how long were you trapped?”
You try to put on your best smile for him. “I don’t remember!”
Isabeau, ever perceptive, doesn’t believe you. “How many times did you…” He trails off, his voice sounding close to breaking, and he shakes his head. Stupid question, you can hear him mutter to himself. Stupid question. He gathers his composure by fanning himself with his hands before meeting your eye again.
“Sif, I know you already said we didn’t need to say anything, but I’m so sorry” he says, head momentarily dropping in shame. “I’m sorry you spent so long suffering on your own like this. I’m sorry that you never felt safe enough to tell us anything you were going through. If you ever did tell us, in any of your loops, and we dismissed you, I’m sorry about that too. I hope you know how much you’re loved, Siffrin,” he coughs, “by-by all of us, you know, we love you so much, and I’m so sorry that you’ve suffered so much, and I’m sorry that you ever thought that we didn’t love you. I know you said it’s fine, but you say that a lot, and, you know, I just want you to know that it’s okay if it isn’t fine. You can tell us. We’re family, yeah? We look out for each other. And, you know, I won’t tell the others about this, so, you know, if you ever wanted to talk about it, just the two of us…”
He’s reaching for your shoulder.
You’re listening, you really are, you’re digesting every word he’s saying to you, but Stars, he’s reaching for your shoulder.
You wait, because that’s all you can do. You wait, and you wait, and you wait, and-
For some reason, though, his expression shifts, and his hand freezes right above your blinding shoulder.
Again.
Your knees feel like jelly, and you only have a moment to think before you collapse to the floor.
You’re a fool, Siffrin.
You didn’t get to tell them after the loops broke.
You’re a FOOL.
“Sif?” Isa’s voice sounds even closer than before. You open your eye, because you squeezed it shut when you fell to the floor, and you’re surprised to find that his face is all…blurry?
(Oh, you started crying. You hadn’t even realized it.)
When your vision finally corrects itself, you see that he’s frowning at you again. “Oh crab, Sif, are you okay? Did something happen? Did I say something wrong?”
You pathetically go to wipe the tears from your eye.
(…He stopped himself because you started crying and he noticed, didn’t he? Well, stars. You’ve cornered yourself, Siffrin. Now you have to talk about it.)
You sit up, bringing your knees to your chest, and bury your face in your hands. “There were…times, in the loops, where you, uh, almost touched me.” You’re blushing so hard through your hands that you feel like your entire body is on fire. “B-because I’d just told you the best pun ever, but then when you went to do it, you’d just freeze, even though I…” you cough, because stars, has it always been so stuffy in here? “...never said you couldn’t, and then, you know, just now, you froze up again, and it’s like…”
Like you’re stuck there again.
Like you’re gonna open your eye and you’re gonna be standing next to the Favor Tree again.
You don’t say it, but the silence that follows tells you that you don’t need to.
You peek through your fingers when you can’t take the silence anymore, and nearly squeak in surprise when you see he’s sitting even closer to you. Your knees would probably be touching if he got any closer. There’s still sadness in his eyes, but there’s a warmth in them strong enough to eat you alive.
“Well, then, Siffrin…?”
The use of your full name catches in your throat. You swallow. “Yeah?”
He reaches a hand out to you, like an offer. “Can I touch you?”
You’re going to explode, you just know it. Here lies Siffrin, on the bedroom floor of some random Vauguardian inn.
You nod your head, because the words are failing you when you most need them.
He laughs quietly, and then slowly, so you can see that it’s coming, places his hand on your shoulder. There’s a zap of warmth that sends an ironic shiver down your spine in an instant, and he meets your eye, just to check and make sure that it wasn’t a flinch. You shake your head, and bring a hand up to meet his.
“D-don’t stop, it’s okay,” you manage to squeak out, and you give his hand a gentle squeeze before dropping your arm back to your side. “I’m still just getting used to it.”
He smiles warmly at you with a glint of hunger in his eyes, and he gently begins to trace the scars on the sides of your neck and shoulders with his fingers. There weren’t too many loops that you can recall where you sustained injuries to your head, so you’re sure at least one of those scars has to be from the very first time you got crushed by that boulder in the Death Corridor during the very first loop, and the thought of Isabeau taking care of that version of you makes you want to cry all over again.
You steady your breathing before he can question you on it.
His hands then find their way to the back of your head, where he starts tracing hearts into the upper ridges of your spine. It’s like he’s trying to carve the reminder into your very being; I love you.
There’s something else, too, like he’s writing a word, and you have to close your eye and wait for him to repeat the pattern along your skin for you to realize what he’s trying to say.
S-I-F-F-R-I-N.
He’s spelling your name.
I love you, he’s saying. You’re here, he’s saying.
You choke back a sob, and hope that it’s muffled enough that he mistakes it for a heavy breath. You open your eye, and can’t help the squeak that escapes you when you realize you’d started leaning towards him while you were trying to decipher his unspoken messages.
He laughs quietly at that, and waits patiently for you to correct your position before he continues to trace your scars down to your arms in a soft and careful manner, like an astronomer mapping their sky’s constellations for the very first time. And it’s almost as if he’s capable of reading your thoughts, because he occasionally presses gently into your arms with his thumbs, dotting you like a star chart. He stops only momentarily at your wrists to take your hands in his own and squeeze them gently, and when you meet his eyes again there’s so much love in his gaze that you feel like you’re drowning.
You’re speechless, but you give no indication that you want him to stop, so he doesn’t. You notice, eventually, that he’s trying his best to avoid touching your chest below your collarbone, and it makes you realize, embarrassingly enough, that you’re still sitting on the floor in just a towel.
There’s a joke to be made there about vulnerability, you just know it. Your heart is currently too stuck in your throat for you to make that joke now, but you try to store that away in your mind for later when you’re heading to bed. For now, you just want to focus on touch, touch, touch.
Eventually, Isabeau finds himself back where he started, and though his hands stop moving, they stay in place where they are on your shoulders. Once again, you bring your hands up to meet his. You breathe in, and out, just to make sure your breath isn’t shaking, and you give him a genuine smile.
“Thank you,” you say, like some kind of idiot.
That was nice, your brain says, like some kind of idiot. You should do that again, your brain says, like some kind of idiot.
He laughs, and brings a hand to cup your cheek, but for some reason that tint of sadness returns to his eyes when you lean into his touch.
“Isa?” You ask, frowning. “Are you okay?”
He blinks, caught off-guard by the question. “Me? Yeah, I’m great,” he replies half-heartedly, but shakes his head to stop you before you have any time to reply. “I’m just…” he sighs. “I’m so sorry, Sif.”
You tilt your head as best as you can. “What for?”
He’s fighting back a smile at the gesture, you can tell, but he continues on. “I mean, I said it before, and I know you’re just gonna say I don’t need to be sorry at all, but…I’m sorry that you never felt comfortable enough to reach out about any of this. Not just the loops, I get that, but…” he starts twirling a strand of your hair between his fingers as a nervous gesture, almost as if to prove his own point, “I’m sorry that you never felt like anyone ever cared for you. And that you never felt comfortable enough to reach out and go oh, hey, actually, I don’t mind being touched! It’s totally cool, Isa!” he blushes, as if his own name wasn’t supposed to end that sentence, but he bites down on his lip and clears his throat to clear that thought away. “I just wish…this was something you could be more comfortable with, you know, and that it didn’t have to be something that needed to be dragged out of you.” His eyes widen, and he brings his other hand into the air defensively. “Not that you’re doing anything wrong, of course, and I’d never push you to say anything before you’re ready, but…” he frowns. “I just know, Sif. I know that if I weren’t the one to notice your scars, it would’ve been a lot longer before any of us ever heard a word about them. I’m…sorry you don’t feel comfortable enough to reach out and ask to be taken care of like that.”
Your heart is shattering in your chest.
It’s not your family. It’s never been them, and it’s not their fault that you don’t even remember your own blinding childhood, so you don’t even have any way of knowing if anyone’s ever taken care of you like that. But that’s just the way it is, because that’s the way the Universe decided it would be.
“It’s not your fault, Isa” you say, because you know that part to be true. “It’s not any of our family’s fault. I just…” you dart your eye away, because you always hate to talk about it, “...don’t remember, okay? It’s hard to ask because I don’t even remember how”
Again, technically true, just not the entire truth. That’s fine. That’s good enough for now.
Isabeau contemplates your words for a moment, and then he takes his hand away from your face to gently cup his hands in yours.
“Well, then, until you remember…” he smiles softly at you again. “I can take care of you. And even when you do remember, I’ll take care of you then, too. Because it’s like I said. I’ll always be at your side, Sif. I’m not going anywhere.”
Ooh, poor choice of phrasing, Isa, now you’re *sure* you’re going to start crying again.
But you don’t. You allow those words to process, and you store them away in your heart for safekeeping.
“...Isa?” You manage, after steadying your voice to normal.
“Sif?”
There’s so much you want to say. There’s so much you want to do.
But you’re exhausted, and seconds away from crying again, and you don’t completely trust your impulse control in your current state of mind.
So for now…
“Can I…have a hug?”
He doesn’t hesitate for even a second before opening his arms for you. “Of course, Sif. C’mere”
You tip over into his arms, because that’s the most give your body is capable of right now, and he catches you like it’s a practiced motion. His arms around you are big and strong, probably double the size of your entire torso, but they hold you gently and carefully, like you’re something precious that he’s afraid of breaking.
The thought that you might be precious to him makes you want to burst into tears. You bury your face in his shoulder and melt into his embrace, and you are not inhaling the comforting rain-like scent of his Craft that’s wafting off of his skin no matter how much it looks like you are, thank you very much. You stay in his arms, and you move very little aside from a number of small adjustments that just have you sinking even further into his embrace.
You don’t say much else, but when Isabeau squishes his cheek into the top of your head, you can’t help the content sigh that escapes you, and all of the tension you didn’t know you were holding onto seems to let go.
You don’t even need to try and crane your neck up to meet his gaze to know that he’s smiling.
In this moment, you feel safe.
In this moment, you feel cared for.
In this moment, you feel very, very loved.