Chapter Text
Aden exploded out of the door of the Rising stones into the Seventh Heaven, twisting to dodge a incoming patrons, ignorant of the dropped glasses, spilled beers, and toppled chairs amidst the resultant panic of seeing the savior of two realms running hells-bent out of the Scions’ headquarters. He barrelled out the front door with a high, chirruping whistle, picking up speed as he turned towards the gate. Somewhere in the stables Keva answered him with a cry, snatched his own reins from a groom and bolted for the fence, the massive destrier clearing it with ease. They met just inside the arch, Aden latching on to the bird’s saddle and swinging himself up into it with both in motion. He made a little click with his tongue and Keva picked up speed, tore through the gate and spread his wings before bolting off the cliff into open air.
His heart hammered against the warm spirit vessel pressed to his breast, tucked safely away in his armor. Would you believe me? He felt cold crystal under his hands again, thrumming with lifeless power. He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to, but even as he didn’t feel that dark despair he had with Haurchefant’s death he couldn’t help but think, to hope is to lose.
To hope is to live. In Raha’s voice, in a voice so like his own, in an ancient voice buried deep in his heart, the slumbering giant Azem. With tears streaming down his face against the biting wind of haste, and trepidation as great as his need, he spurred Keva on towards the Crystal Tower. He didn’t wait for the bird to fully land, leaping off before touchdown. Keva gave a little disgruntled noise, but waited all the same at a sharp click of his tongue. Aden hit the ground running, and the Tower gates slid open before him.
He expected the strange sensation of the Tower’s welcome, but instead found only a growing hum. It’d been in stasis, locked up tight--perhaps everything was off. He’d grown to know the brush of vague awareness and cherish what it represented, and its absence unnerved him, as once it’d unnerved him to feel it. He didn’t belong to this Tower, the way he did--had--to the one on the First. He felt Fray’s gentle touch turn his thoughts for him--away from the deep and abiding silence he’d felt when last he entered.
Aden ran. He knew the way to the Ocular well, and beyond it to the Umbilicus, the buzzing mind of the Tower itself. The glow all around him slowly increased, systems awakening to the presence of royal blood and awaiting a command--one he didn’t dare give, for fear it might damage the precious cargo.
There, in the center of the sanctum, he lay curled on his side, wearing what he’d worn the day he’d sealed the Tower, hair grown into an unruly mess behind him with his usual tuck-bun and braid at the end. Aden unlatched the side of his breastplate and withdrew the precious cargo, wrapped in a gold and black scarf the Means had gifted the Exarch in the first winter: the spirit vessel, and a ring dark as drachenmaille, carved with fine woven branches, a sapphire and a bit of crystal nestled next to one another, flush with the band, one side wrapped in string to make it fit a smaller hand. He paused, staring at the ring against his palm--all it had represented was lost to him once more. All it had represented rested frozen in eternal vigil at the top of the Crystal Tower on the First.
But he held a promise in his other hand. He clenched the ring tight, and knelt down next to G’raha. He carefully placed the spirit vessel, reluctant to let go of it, then watched, and waited.
Several heartbeats passed, breaths, long minutes counted by the rhythmic hum of the Tower building up to normal levels. It wasn’t the first he’d counted time to those sounds, but it might be the last. Aden reached out to brush a stray lock of hair out of G’raha’s face, unnerved by how cold and lifeless he looked in stasis. Nothing happened, and still he watched, and he waited. You promised, he didn’t say--because he couldn’t accuse G’raha like that, couldn’t blame him for doing what was right and necessary. They both knew it, and Aden had held his hands steady on the staff and poured his own bottomless wellspring of aether through their bond and doubly damned him for it. For one strange, beautiful and terrible moment they’d almost been one, moreso than ever before--and the sleeping ancient within him, the thing formless but now named, had reached out for the one in G’raha in a barrage of alien and familiar sensations and memories he couldn’t sift through. They had done this before, and fate willing they would again--under better circumstances. But with each passing moment not, it seemed, in Aden’s lifetime. He swallowed thickly, throat tight as his count reached half a bell. Perhaps he should’ve waited, and brought Krile.
His eyes traced the youthful curves of G’raha’s face, committing it to memory. This, at least, he might have--a different last vision than the terrible, perfect statue of the man he had fallen in love with. Even if the man who lay there sleeping would now never become him--must be someone else, in some other future, if he did not wake here and now. Urianger’s voice echoed in his head, the Exarch must needs recognize his past self as simply that─himself. Aden had never for one moment doubted, until now, that he was--he had talked about killing that young man to become the Exarch and do what he must, but it was all a fiction, as much a fiction as Aden had permitted himself while Fray held his demons at bay. They were each of them, beneath everything else, the same as they had been all those years ago, when their eyes were bright and their hearts not yet weary.
A bell passed, another. His linkpearl went off, and he ignored it. It went off again, and he answered with a whispered, dark, “Not now,” before breaking the connection. He didn’t know how long he meant to wait. He heard the subtle change in the Tower’s tune that indicated night had fallen. What time had it been, when he arrived? He’d stopped caring the moment he saw the first half-summoned hero ringed in Allagan magics, cared only for now. His linkpearl went off again, and he ripped it off and put it away.
Some time late in the night Aden latched his breastplate back into place, and very, very carefully folded the scarf up, ring safe inside. He laid this down next to the spirit vessel rather than clutch desperately at them. He laid his hand over the crystal, warm and humming with familiar aether, and marveled at how much of it he covered with his hand. Such a delicate thing under his gauntlet, and Elidibus could’ve done any damage in his madness. He closed his stinging eyes, and bowed his head. For all his might, he could never hold onto the things he cherished. “Raha,” he murmured, and fancied he felt that gentle sunset warmth--as he had the whole time he carried the vessel, imagining G’raha were really with him.
“...Aden?”
Aden jerked his head up, ears nearly pointing--scarlet peered up at him from beneath long lashes, half-hidden by that unruly bit of hair fallen back into place. The crystal beneath his hand was cold and dull, but that sunset warmth lingered all around him. He stared dumbly, scarcely able to breathe, jaw tight while G’raha blinked away sleep. In the soft glow of the Umbilicus he looked almost angelic, something far too sacred to be real, and Aden wondered if he had walked into a dream, or somehow called upon Azem’s power to warp reality and present himself with the vision he fervently desired.
G’raha yawned so wide his jaw popped, and it startled Aden out of his reverie, ripped a sharp, surprised bark of laughter out of him. He pulled his hand away from the spirit vessel, now dark, as quieter laughter shook him, delirious and relieved. “It's good to see you awake, Raha.”
G’raha’s eyes blinked open wider, his ears perking with just a subtle tilt of his head in Aden’s direction. “‘Tis good to be awake,” he murmured, and reached out for Aden, grabbing at now long-familiar joints in his drachenmaille. He tugged with little force behind it, weak from his long sleep, but Aden followed all the same. G’raha rolled onto his back, and their lips met with all the desperate longing of their first kiss in Kholusia. Aden fought not to melt into him, to sob, overwhelmed and body demanding catharsis for a tension that’d wound up his entire life and over the past year slowly, slowly began to release only to explode apart in this moment. He pulled away and wrapped an arm behind G’raha’s shoulders, hooked the other under his knees, and lifted such that they were facing one another, pressing their foreheads together in a soft bunt. G’raha, too, sobbed and laughed with him, arms circling around Aden, one hand tangling in his short hair and one ear flicking wildly.
“I’m sorry,” G’raha’s voice came hoarse and whisper-soft, “I’m sorry I had to leave you, even for a little while.”
“I hoped,” Aden answered, voice tight, and he flicked his ears forward, brushing G’raha’s. “You came back. Like you promised. You always come back.”
“I had to. There’s nowhere I want to be more than by your side.” G’raha kissed him, slower this time, fingers tightening in his hair, and they stayed like that for a long time, Aden holding him while he took breathless, lingering kisses, like learning the shape of his lips with this body that’d never touched him. Finally he pulled back, gasping for air, and pressed his forehead to Aden’s once more. “All that said,” he paused for breath, “I don’t think I’ll be walking out of here under my own strength.”
“Then you’ll just have to leave in my arms.”
Aden knelt long enough for G’raha to gather up the scarf and the ring, and the spirit vessel besides--”You never know,” he said. Then as Aden rose, adjusting his grip to carry G’raha more comfortably, G’raha’s head jerked up, eyes narrowed. “Wait, why is this folded up so neatly? Were you about to leave it here?”
Aden opened his mouth to reply, then closed it with an audible clack of his teeth. He turned, G’raha still looking up at him expectantly. Heat rose up the back of his neck. “Later,” he finally murmured, voice tight for a different reason--embarrassment so strong he blushed was so rare it almost felt new.
“It doesn’t matter,” G’raha said, his eyes softening and a little smile curling his lips. He busied himself adjusting the string around the ring, and by the time they reached the bottom he had it back where it belonged, and was nearly nodding off in Aden’s arms.
As they approached Keva, Aden made a couple of little clicks with his tongue, and the bird didn’t immediately react, turning instead and cocking its head, turning one wide, dark eye on G’raha in the glow of the Tower.
“You know him,” Aden answered. “It’s just been a while.”
Keva glowered a moment longer, then turned with a flip of his head like a petulant teenager might flip their hair, and carefully knelt--the command Aden had given him. Aden helped G’raha into the saddle, then settled down behind him, one arm wrapped around him and one on the reins. Keva rose, and as they settled in for a far less dramatic ride back to Revenant’s Toll, G’raha found exactly the right angle to nestle in against Aden. Some of the lingering anxiety drained out of Aden at that--they still fit. “Love you,” he murmured into G’raha’s ear, and laid a kiss in his hair at the base of it. G’raha’s tail snaked over his leg, seeking his, and he gave a little sigh as they twined together.
What a lovesick pair they made, wrung out but happy as they rode slowly into Revenant’s Toll by starlight.