[ Osha'li hears the way G'raha's voice stops like that, just this side of breaking, and he feels bad for that.
You died.
Seven hells, no wonder Alisaie can't leave him alone. He deserves her mess of emotions and then some.
His ears droop against his head for a moment. How close they had come to losing everything. ]
I'm sorry. Not for sending you all back, but...for all the rest. Scaring you so. Burning out.
[ Not that any of them can really hold it against him, since they'd all done much the same, giving themselves to save their world and perhaps many others. Osha'li would make the same decision again in a moment.
He rests against G'raha, glad for the contact, glad to have him solid and warm and whole. ]
I couldn't run from Zenos again, nor could I let him leave that place alive.
[ He shakes his head. Even behind him, the movement tugs at the muscles of his neck and shoulders. If anything can be felt through the everything, it's perceivable. ]
Don't apologise. I won't believe you if you do. Because I know full well that you would do it again in a heartbeat, every last breath of it, if you thought it might preserve any one of us for a second. A little fear is- [ He pauses, sighing, and the next words are warmer. More certain. ] -it is the cost one pays, to love anything worth loving. A cost we would pay a thousand times.
[ 'Love'. Perhaps that is a little too much to say. Truly, if anything, it sounds like an understatement. ]
Just you. And if he lived, were he anything close to as aether-deficient as you were, he could have never returned here without the ship.
totally understand! i'm glad you got that vax! also whoops gave myself feeilngsu
[ Osha'li is dimly aware that G'raha moves, but even if he's abnormally perceptive most of the time, right now he's, perhaps too literally, stretched thin. ]
As any of you would have done.
[ There's a note of wryness there in his voice. Of course they would, present company especially included. Watching G'raha walk into that swirling cloud of dynamis that time had been especially wrenching, really, because it was the second time he'd had to watch the other Miqo'te do something like that. But he can't really come at G'raha too hard for it. Osha'li's very nature is self-sacrificing, perhaps from Azem or another shard or perhaps just his own inherent whatever it is.
Love, though. Isn't that it? The answer to Hermes's question? Or Meteion's, Hydaelyn's, anyone's? What is this all for, at the very end of it, at the end of the universe? All the stars will burn away into the nothing and the universe will freeze over and become devoid of life and what was the fucking point?
And there it is, he thinks, and he seeks for G'raha's hand with one still shaky hand of his own.
Love. That was ever the answer, even if Emet-Selch himself would have refused to voice it as such. He voiced it as memory. Remember that we lived. But perhaps he ought to have said remember that we loved. For what else could have driven Hades to recreate Amaurot in all its exquisite detail at the bottom of the ocean? What else is worth fighting for?
Zenos had never understood it. Maybe that's why Osha'li gets to be here and Zenos is nothing but stardust at the end of space and time. ]
Then that much is over. His reasons were terrible and I cannot forgive him, but none of us would be here if he hadn't finally decided to help, if only to get Meteion out of the way of his great battle. He said we were the same, but...gods, I hope he was wrong.
As we would still do. In a heartbeat. The same as you. None of us, I think, are in a position for lectures.
[ There are a hundred thousand things he ought to be doing, now the Warrior is awake. Questions he ought to be asking. Food (or rather aether-dense sweet liquids, until they are certain that proper food is safe) to be trying to convince him to consume. Bandages he ought to be changing. Somehow none of them seem as important as just remaining here. As settling into place behind him so that Osha'li's back rests against his chest. As sliding his hand into his. ]
The whole world came together so that we might do this. Cast aside any number of differences betwixt them that we might all live. If he were aught like you, he would have stood at our side then. He would have had a teleporter of his own. He would have returned.
[ He sighs, lacing his fingers with Osha'li's. ] That he is gone and you are here is proof that he was wrong.
[ Osha'li is glad for the grounding weight of G'raha behind him, against him. He still feels strange. The way he feels the world is changed now. Hydaelyn's presence is gone, though the Echo and whatever it means isn't, not really, not exactly. His own power remains with him, far away and hard to fathom now, as long as his own aether is so thin and scarce. He should seek to replenish it. He does not relish the idea of dying again, not now that he is here and awake. But he doesn't want G'raha to move away, either, so he simply waits, and allows himself to exist.
Existing in the present is such a rare luxury.
Outside this room, along with Alisaie's anger and relief, Alphinaud's questions, Thancred's jokes that will do nothing to hide his actual feelings, and all the rest of it, there will be holes that no one can fill. The lives that they have lost across all of Eorzea will be apparent. The uncertain future of Garlemald waits for all of them.
And beyond that...well, Osha'li has an adventurer's heart that he refuses to credit to Azem. He thinks of the places Emet-Selch rattled off, the places on distant shores he has not yet seen, places that he hopes he will have the freedom to visit now that the star is not in immediate danger. And who better to see them with than the scholar supporting his weight in this bed now? G'raha had outright asked him for as much, though he knows that the other Miqo'te had not really expected to live to undertake that adventure.
He can't find strength to voice it yet, but it burns inside him, that desire to seek out something at the edge of a horizon he can't yet imagine. There will be another day. They will move on. They will live, and live, and live, and carry the pieces of those who could not with them, as they must. ]
You're right, of course.
[ At least he manages to tighten his hand in G'raha's, an enormous feat today. He sighs. That horizon is much farther off than he'd like to admit. This recovery will take so long, and that galls him. He's supposed to be so strong, damnit. ]
Are you all right, G'raha? All of us had quite an ordeal. It isn't every day you go to the very end of the universe.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sandwichbasket) wrote2021-11-26 01:03 am
no subject
You died.
Seven hells, no wonder Alisaie can't leave him alone. He deserves her mess of emotions and then some.
His ears droop against his head for a moment. How close they had come to losing everything. ]
I'm sorry. Not for sending you all back, but...for all the rest. Scaring you so. Burning out.
[ Not that any of them can really hold it against him, since they'd all done much the same, giving themselves to save their world and perhaps many others. Osha'li would make the same decision again in a moment.
He rests against G'raha, glad for the contact, glad to have him solid and warm and whole. ]
I couldn't run from Zenos again, nor could I let him leave that place alive.
[ Though a terrible thought occurs to him. ]
I...it was just me that came back, right?
Sorry for the delay, vaccine hit me hard.
[ He shakes his head. Even behind him, the movement tugs at the muscles of his neck and shoulders. If anything can be felt through the everything, it's perceivable. ]
Don't apologise. I won't believe you if you do. Because I know full well that you would do it again in a heartbeat, every last breath of it, if you thought it might preserve any one of us for a second. A little fear is- [ He pauses, sighing, and the next words are warmer. More certain. ] -it is the cost one pays, to love anything worth loving. A cost we would pay a thousand times.
[ 'Love'. Perhaps that is a little too much to say. Truly, if anything, it sounds like an understatement. ]
Just you. And if he lived, were he anything close to as aether-deficient as you were, he could have never returned here without the ship.
totally understand! i'm glad you got that vax! also whoops gave myself feeilngsu
As any of you would have done.
[ There's a note of wryness there in his voice. Of course they would, present company especially included. Watching G'raha walk into that swirling cloud of dynamis that time had been especially wrenching, really, because it was the second time he'd had to watch the other Miqo'te do something like that. But he can't really come at G'raha too hard for it. Osha'li's very nature is self-sacrificing, perhaps from Azem or another shard or perhaps just his own inherent whatever it is.
Love, though. Isn't that it? The answer to Hermes's question? Or Meteion's, Hydaelyn's, anyone's? What is this all for, at the very end of it, at the end of the universe? All the stars will burn away into the nothing and the universe will freeze over and become devoid of life and what was the fucking point?
And there it is, he thinks, and he seeks for G'raha's hand with one still shaky hand of his own.
Love. That was ever the answer, even if Emet-Selch himself would have refused to voice it as such. He voiced it as memory. Remember that we lived. But perhaps he ought to have said remember that we loved. For what else could have driven Hades to recreate Amaurot in all its exquisite detail at the bottom of the ocean? What else is worth fighting for?
Zenos had never understood it. Maybe that's why Osha'li gets to be here and Zenos is nothing but stardust at the end of space and time. ]
Then that much is over. His reasons were terrible and I cannot forgive him, but none of us would be here if he hadn't finally decided to help, if only to get Meteion out of the way of his great battle. He said we were the same, but...gods, I hope he was wrong.
no subject
[ There are a hundred thousand things he ought to be doing, now the Warrior is awake. Questions he ought to be asking. Food (or rather aether-dense sweet liquids, until they are certain that proper food is safe) to be trying to convince him to consume. Bandages he ought to be changing. Somehow none of them seem as important as just remaining here. As settling into place behind him so that Osha'li's back rests against his chest. As sliding his hand into his. ]
The whole world came together so that we might do this. Cast aside any number of differences betwixt them that we might all live. If he were aught like you, he would have stood at our side then. He would have had a teleporter of his own. He would have returned.
[ He sighs, lacing his fingers with Osha'li's. ] That he is gone and you are here is proof that he was wrong.
no subject
Existing in the present is such a rare luxury.
Outside this room, along with Alisaie's anger and relief, Alphinaud's questions, Thancred's jokes that will do nothing to hide his actual feelings, and all the rest of it, there will be holes that no one can fill. The lives that they have lost across all of Eorzea will be apparent. The uncertain future of Garlemald waits for all of them.
And beyond that...well, Osha'li has an adventurer's heart that he refuses to credit to Azem. He thinks of the places Emet-Selch rattled off, the places on distant shores he has not yet seen, places that he hopes he will have the freedom to visit now that the star is not in immediate danger. And who better to see them with than the scholar supporting his weight in this bed now? G'raha had outright asked him for as much, though he knows that the other Miqo'te had not really expected to live to undertake that adventure.
He can't find strength to voice it yet, but it burns inside him, that desire to seek out something at the edge of a horizon he can't yet imagine. There will be another day. They will move on. They will live, and live, and live, and carry the pieces of those who could not with them, as they must. ]
You're right, of course.
[ At least he manages to tighten his hand in G'raha's, an enormous feat today. He sighs. That horizon is much farther off than he'd like to admit. This recovery will take so long, and that galls him. He's supposed to be so strong, damnit. ]
Are you all right, G'raha? All of us had quite an ordeal. It isn't every day you go to the very end of the universe.