Archive of Our Own

Alisaie honestly does not register the rape aspect of her imprisonment with the breadth of horror it, perhaps, deserves. Sharlayans do not attach shame nor power to sexual expression. It is all needless, biological distraction in their eyes—as useless as the necessity of food and sleep—and once she hit her first growth she was taught to treat it as another impulse her body craved but her mind could overcome.

Therefore, when Alisaie is raped, she is impossible to crack. She knows she is meant to feel desecrated and overpowered. She is meant to feel shattered. She doesn’t quite know how to explain to her captor that she fundamentally understands what the ploy is, though, and it is not going to work. She, personally, has no concept of virginity, of purity, of shame, and of her place as the role of the conquered. She wants to say: you’re wasting your time, here. She wants to say: this body is still my own, no matter who manhandles it. She wants to say: clearly, your plan isn’t working. Are you discovering that? Are you stupid?

She bites her tongue.

She’s gotten used to it by now. The physical roughness, the occasional pain, is the only thing keeping her days from devolving into pure boredom. It’s like watching a man lose at chess two dozen times over without a single shift in strategy. Zenos means to break her, but he is so bogged down with Garlean notions of sex as an act of power that he has failed to consider that it is culturally irrelevant to her. They had rape in Sharlayan, sure, but they did not drown the woman in the shame of her victimization nor claim her some precious, holy temple contaminated forever. It was a crime because it was violent. Sharlayan could be dense, emotionally, but it was not incompetent. They would not ask the victim of a knife to be humiliated at the idea of being stabbed.

Her hips are dragged down the young Prince of Garlemald’s Imperial prick a final time before he spills inside her. It draws no panic from her lungs. When it became clear he meant to continue his relations with her, she had made an impassive, passionless case that a royal bastard was not something either of them wanted to deal with. She was subsequently offered a daily drought that stopped her cycle in its entirety. Convenient for both of them, truly. It has been six moons since then.

The torture is not every night, and sometimes she will go weeks between being called upon, but it is frequent enough to become unsurprising. He drags her to wherever he wants her. He restrains her. He fucks her. He calls her all manner of things—a beast meant for naught but his pleasure when she makes it difficult, a pliable whore when she makes it easy—but he never seems quite satisfied with the reaction he pulls from her. He senses her disinterest. He thrusts his hips at her like she’s a senseless, useless hole and then dresses her up in pretty clothes from countries she’s never visited and makes her sit publicly upon his lap while he holds the rare court. She says nothing. She plays her part, and keeps her mouth shut, and only thinks about slitting his throat a few dozen times.

The painting of her as a mere accessory does, actually, get under her skin. She doesn’t like the jewelry or the underclothes or the dresses so fetishtic in nature she would honestly rather be spreading herself over him while wearing nothing at all. Unlike the sex, the collar placed around her neck is actually possessive and is actually demeaning. The chain that ties her to a bolt at the foot of the throne is mindless posturing but it is effective enough in its narrative. She is in the heart of the Garlean-controlled Ala Mhigo palace, arguably the most secure Imperial outpost outside of Garlemald proper. Where in the seven hells was she to run?

“Off,” Zenos orders. He has had his fill, this night, and she is no worse for it. He wants her gone.

She rolls her eyes, and lifts herself from his lap. She’s lost some of the circulation in her legs but she remains steady as she slips off the throne and back to a stand. The chain at her neck clinks. She adjusts the hem of her short skirt like it’s ever going to fall below waterline. She rolls her shoulder. He had dragged her to her place by an overextended arm, earlier, and the socket is still a bit sore.

Some of his seed slips out of her, but she ignores it.

The throne room is empty except for two guards at the door. He let them fuck her once, too, just to see if he was the problem or something, she guesses, but the result had been no different. She had taken it like the strike of a whip. She had disappointed him once again. She wants to tell him: what aren’t you getting? I don’t associate rape as more than violence, and I can handle violence. She doesn’t tell him, though, because she wants to watch his face when he finally figures it out for himself.

“Sit.”

He points to the ground at his feet. She does as she’s told, because she’s not stupid. She sits well-postured and cross-legged on the floor by his legs and lets him slump on his throne and ponder or whatever the hells he likes to do when he’s just stationed there in silence. He has a whole brooding prince routine. He does that for a while, and then he leaves, and then at some point someone remembers she is there and she’s escorted to his bedroom and chained up again, at which point she informs the guard a bathroom break would be nice, at which point he looks sort of unsure and sheepish, as if there is no cemented procedure in place regarding what to do if the human pets Prince Zenos keeps around need anything beyond a sip of water, even though she and her brother have been here for the better half of a year. She will complain. They will give her what she asks and then they will leave. And then Zenos will return and fuck her once again and check to see if she is okay, which she always is, at which point he will give a frustrated, petulant little sigh and lock her back up in her own quarters. Then, the cycle will repeat. She is a constant source of irritation, she knows. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“You know, sometimes I fear you might enjoy this,” Zenos taunts her, one night, voice low and salacious, dick ramming inside her with all the talent of a battering ram.

“I don’t,” she informs him, plainly.

She has to sleep on the floor that night. Alphinaud gets the bed. Alphinaud rarely gets much of anything from Zenos. The Imperial Prince likes to position them against one another, though, sometimes, like they are ever going to fight for the privilege of his affection. They’re a united front. They are, essentially, unionized. If he attempts to bait them against each other they are even more expressionless and even more unimpressed than usual.

Zenos is weirder about Alphinaud. Zenos does not parade Alphinaud around like he does Alisaie. Alphinaud is brought to his chambers in secret. Alphinaud is never shown off to his court. Alphinaud is rarely even permitted to be in the same room as Alisaie, much less presented before any other stray eye. Zenos’ cock is no softer for her twin brother, but his demeanor is even more bitter at Alphinaud’s matched indifference to the cruelty inflicted upon him. Zenos once again betrays his Garlean conceptions of sex when attempting to break Alphinaud. He will attempt to say, “pathetic cocksucker,” or, “desperate for any man who will have you,” or, simply, “whore,” and Alphinaud will be wholly unaffected.

He is Sharlayan too. He is as strong as Alisaie.

Alphinaud once told their captor, “You seem unfooted by the nature of your own sexuality. There is actually a theorized biological component to gender preference when it comes to carnal relations. It occurs naturally in many species, Spoken and dull alike. Some think it’s a natural measure of population control in the respective beings.” 

Which, of course, got him slapped across the face. “Queer.”

“I prefer women, actually,” Alphinaud had confessed. “However, that is simply my personal relationship to courtship. Sharlayan might have a rather dismissive view of sex, it’s true, but it’s ultimately neutral on the issue of type of sex. It’s all a bother, as far as we’re concerned. Man or woman, alone or paired, it’s simply a distraction against more noble pursuits—“

Alphinaud had been fucked, then, and decided to pair down on the speeches in the subsequent moons. That was about the only inch he offered Zenos. Like her, everything that was being done to him was purely a physical torture, devoid of both shame and bruised ego. They have learned to avert their eyes from the attempted degradation of the other on the rare instances where they are taken in the same bed. They have tried to be normal about it, all things considered.

If Zenos ever did decide to kill them, and he probably would, one day, it would be because they finally pushed him to snap with the sheer weight of their indifference.

“Kiss her.”

It is late in the night and they’re still in the throne room. Alphinaud’s face has been splattered with the spend of their enemy and Alisaie is resting on the floor before the throne, exhausted, used, with a splitting headache coming on. Alphinaud does not move from where he kneels before their captor.

“Excuse me?” Alphinaud says.

The chain connected to his collar is grabbed and wrenched upwards, snapping his head back.

“I said,” Zenos orders, “kiss her. Make her taste me on you.”

Alisaie’s blood goes cold.

“What?” Alphinaud says. “No.”

It’s the wrong answer. They’ve never shown a blink of weakness towards Zenos. They’ve never implied to him that there is a line they actually possess, a boundary he can dare to cross.

Zenos smiles with the scent of blood. “Kiss her.”

“She’s my sister,” Alphinaud argues. He sounds like a Studium schoolboy on the debate team when he adds, “I am aware your kind are limited in numbers, and the shallowness of the prospective genepool and strict adherence to racial boundaries leads to the occasional interbred Imperial marriage. However, I’m assuming such things are still generally looked down upon in the social graces of Garlemald.”

“I’m not asking.”

“Absolutely not,” Alphinaud says, as if he has any say in the matter.

“Kiss her, or I’ll rape her in front of you again.”

Alisaie mentally prepares herself for a second round. Her whole body aches, but it’s just pain. She can handle pain. Zenos has never compromised her before, and he won’t start now. She sits up. Her chain drags heavy and metallic at the action.

Alphinaud looks over his shoulder at her.

Alisaie says, to Zenos, “You’ve already come twice tonight. I’d be surprised if you found the spirit to get it up again.”

“You’ve watched her struggle,” Zenos says, to Alphinaud, and Alisaie realizes she is being overstepped. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? She’s so strong, so terribly strong, but there are things even she fails to hide. She claims your people are immune to the sharpest edges of rape. What a convenient cultural quirk. However, at the end of a long night, she is still simply a woman. Now isn’t she?”

“I’m right here,” Alisaie says.

Alphinaud has gone very pale and very silent.

“No woman is wholly immune to the act,” Zenos continues. “Deny me, and I’ll make it hurt. I’ll take her and press my hands to her neck until she glimpses the face of your false god.”

“Alphinaud,” Alisaie snaps. “There’s nothing he can do that he hasn’t attempted already. I can handle it.”

“I’ll let the guards have their way with her, too, in whatever hole might fancy them,” Zenos threatens her brother. “I’ll make you sit on my cock and watch.”

“Alphinaud,” Alisaie says, voice pitching up.

“I will deny her the nightly concoction that keeps her womb bare. I am unafraid to leave your sister to the whorl of fate.”

“Alphinaud.”

Zenos reaches out and places a heavy, threatening hand on Alphinaud’s shoulder. “Kiss her, and I will end our game for the night. It’s only a kiss, hm? Surely you’ve kissed her before. She is, after all, your sister.”

Alphinaud lowers himself on all fours and crawls towards Alisaie.

“No,” she says, flatly.

“I am not above playing to indulgences for a worthy bargain,” Alphinaud informs her.

“What possible reason does he have to keep his word?” Alisaie replies.

“It’s just a kiss.”

“It is not just a kiss,” Alisaie spits at him. “It is a deliberate and effective means to make us uncomfortable, and it will not end here.”

“Set aside your pride,” Alphinaud says, raising his voice. He is right in front of her now.

“What do you think I have been doing for six moons?” she yells back. “Fiddling around with my pride? Taking it on and off like a piece of jewelry?”

“Alisaie.”

“No,” she says, firmly, which is about when he kisses her regardless.

He tastes salted and sour, Zenos’ spend still staining his lips. It is chaste in the way two bucks colliding are chaste. It’s blunt and fraught, his mouth swallowing the sound of her protest and his hands darting up to secure either side of her jaw. She attempts to shove him off of her but he clings to her like his life depends on it. He doesn’t pull back even as they draw short of breath. He’s waiting for something. He’s waiting for Zenos.

“…Well done,” Zenos says, at last. “That’s enough for the night.”

Alphinaud pulls back, and Alisaie slaps him. He takes the strike without protest.

“Never again,” she states.

It happens again. She’s not sure what Alphinaud was expecting, really. He caves without pressure. It’s the threat of denying her the drought that does him in, she thinks. Sharlayans did possess some inkling of shame for a baby born out of wedlock. It is so fucking irritating that this is the foothold Zenos has dug between her ribs. She tells her brother, “I’d rather carry a child,” but he’s so insistent on protecting her. Her, who has not so much as whimpered a complaint for moons. That is a second weak point in her brother: a fear of bastards, and a devotion to the pure, useless white knighting of a man for a woman.

Zenos does not let the chance slip. He’s found a button to press, at last, and he cherishes their time together with increased frequency. They’re summoned together more often than not now. He takes great pleasure stripping the strength from the strong. She grows used to the feel of Alphinaud’s lips on her. She grows used to his body against her bare skin. She grows used to the sound of her own voice pleading, “No.”

She knows the argument he would make if they bothered to argue about it at all: better himself than anyone else. Better someone who loves her. Better someone who would never hurt her, intentionally, and therefore was superior to those who would hurt her without remorse. She gets used to the sound of her own frustration. She wants to yell, to fight, but she can’t. If she gives in here she will only be giving Zenos exponential satisfaction.

The first time her brother comes down her throat on Zenos’ order, she wretches onto the ground. She heaves up the meager contents of her stomach beside him while he says, “Alisaie, I’m sorry,” and, “I am sorry,” and, “I am so sorry.”

She doesn’t acknowledge him for a week after that. Zenos wins the round.

For all his grovelling, Alphinaud has no reservations about continuing the game. He touches Alisaie on command. They place their hands and mouths where they’re told. It is a ticking clock to the inevitable, but Zenos seems to hold a flair for the dramatic. He keeps them waiting for what is sure to come. He keeps them guessing. Would tonight be the night? Would this evening be the summons where the final line will be crossed?

It comes, as it was always designed to.

The first time Zenos orders Alphinaud to fuck her, he does not even flinch. They have both been steeling themselves for this day. Alphinaud crawls overtop her with determination in his brow. She gazes up at him. He gazes down at her.

She says, “No.”

At any cost. At any price. They can kill either or both of them. They can flay her alive.

Alphinaud breaks. She witnesses it the moment it happens. He pulls himself off of her like a man burned with the light of the gods. He starts sobbing. His chest rises and falls with panic. He says, “Alisaie,” heartbroken, and he looks up at Zenos and says, “I can’t. Anything else. I can’t. I won’t.” He says, “Please.” He says, “She is my sister.”

She expects Zenos to threaten pregnancy again. Instead, he simply beats the breath from Alphinaud’s lungs.

Alphinaud screams at the assault. It is so primal, so physical—real, actual violence after weeks of emotional manipulation. Alisaie won’t allow it. Zenos is fully armored and she is naked and battered but still, she clings to him. Still, she digs her fingers into the joints of his armor. She shrieks like an animal. She manages to uncurl a hand around Alphinaud’s throat. She manages, in the sense that she cranes her head forward and digs her teeth into Zenos’ fingers.

Zenos drops Alphinaud in favor of her. His lethal gaze turns on her frail body. It’s not an intent at torture. It’s angry, and dark, and inextinguishable with naught but an offering of blood. He grips her by the scalp and slams her head into the ground. She is knocked out cold, without protest, without so much as a noise. Her body falls broken. Her vision darkens, and then is gone, in only a few brief seconds.

She hears Alphinaud’s scream and then she hears nothing at all.

She wakes up in Zenos’ bed with her brother at her side. He is lying as far away from her as possible, risking falling off the edge. He is not facing her. Her head throbs. Everything hurts. She has been filled with Zenos’ spend once again. She feels it leak out of her as she shifts. She has been violated in the depths of her unconsciousness. She prickles with discomfort. A new day, a new boundary she didn’t know she possessed.

“Fuck,” she says, eyes shutting. “Are you alright?”

“You need not forgive me, Alisaie.”

Alphinaud’s voice is so very soft from the other side of the room.

“Resentment would serve neither of us,” she says. She does, however, consider this his fault. If they had just been petulant, unbeatable captives—more trouble than they’re worth—maybe they’d be dead by now.

She pauses. Was she at that point, then? Was death preferable to where they find themselves now?

“It’s alright, Alphinaud,” she tells her brother. “It’s over for the night.”

“He made me take you in your sleep.”

She shifts her hips, and feels the result within her. She feels sick. Her hands ball into fists.

“It’s over,” she says, again.

She turns on her side and then they are back to back, not even close to touching, and she slouches in defeat. They have lost. They have lost everything. This is it. This is how it ends.

The next time it happens, she is alive to the world.

It’s an order. It’s a threat. Alphinaud is ready to fight, but she finds the twin flame extinguished inside her. She tells Alphinaud, “It’s alright,” because what happened last time simply can never happen again. He cries through it, but she can offer him this assurance. It’s alright. It will be alright. She accepts him into her. He deserves some guilt off his shoulders. She will suffer the weight of this for both of them.

When she is given her drought that night, she gulps it down in one, desperate swig. She is not taking chances. Alphinaud watches. They’re being kept together, now, more often than not. Zenos must have realized that isolating them from one another was the wrong angle of approach. They are weaker at the sight of the other being corroded, slowly, as if with some bitter acid. They are weaker when they can witness the other’s harm.

Some nights, when their skin does not prickle with horror, they will hold one another. She will press her forehead to his and they will curl their arms around one another’s backs and all will be well, for a moment. All will be normal.

Some nights, he won’t stop crying, and she doesn’t know what to do. She wants to be angry. She wants to tell him to pull himself together. She can do it; why can’t he? She wants to get him to stop sobbing. She wants to get him to stop apologizing. Obviously, he has been forced. Obviously, she has rejected his ordered affections because—what was she supposed to do, accept them? Her resistance only serves to sanction him deeper into his guilt. He tells her he has failed her as a brother. He tells her he has failed her as a man. He tells her he will find a way to end himself, for her, that she might not suffer the indignity of this any longer.

She doesn’t know how else to ease him of his loathing. She kisses him, without command and without prompting. She kisses him beneath the silence of a room not observed by Zenos nor anyone else. She kisses him, because she can no longer bear the sight of him thinking he is the one who has sullied her.

“Alisaie,” he gasps, between breaths, but she kisses him again, and he kisses back.

She kisses him with love in her heart. It feels good in a way she has forgotten kisses could feel. He’s warm, against her, and familiar. She forgot good things could be familiar too. Zenos has left them to rot in the quandary he has thrust them in but it feels good, in a horrible, unrepeatable way, to take something for herself for once. She pulls Alphinaud’s head closer. He tilts it, so that she might have better access to his mouth. Their teeth clack and their minds draw blank. In another life, where this was a mere hypothetical and they were safe at home in Sharlayan, Alphinaud would have argued against the fundamental destruction of societal ethics in the situation. She would have argued, not because she believed it but because she liked when he was wrong, that any form of agency in a sexual captivity situation was healthy, don’t you think? Alphinaud would argue that giving into the impulse could be construed as a product of the original intention to break them, their bond, their honor, their previous disgust at the thought of fucking their twin. This could all be the grand plan. At which point she would have pointed out Zenos was not even present. Who was this for but one another?

They keep kissing. The days continue, long and dull and peppered with pain, and they do not stop.

Zenos brings them out as a pair of toys, now, and directs them like a stage producer. He will idly thumb himself while saying filth and commanding Alisaie to place her hands here or there, ordering Alphinaud to fuck faster or slower, and when he is bored of the mechanics of the situation he will move on to forcing intimacy. Kiss her. Hold her. Isn’t this disgusting, how you yearn for her? Look at how she hates you. Look at how she flinches from your touch. They’re being played against each other in a new way, but instead of driving them apart it is stitching them together. As soon as Zenos has had his fill they are holding hands over his chest in bed. If he leaves them alone, they curl as close as they can get to each other. They kiss, and kiss, and drag their hands down one another. They rub against each other with hardness and dampness rarely pried from them by Zenos. They kiss, and Alisaie says, “You can,” but she doesn’t finish the thought, but Alphinaud gets the point because he says, “We can’t,” even though they have several times, now, at Zenos’ command. It’s different without an order, though. The depth of their choice in the matter makes Alisaie's head spin. She feels as if the whole of her very small world is her oyster when she tells Alphinaud, “I want you.”

She slides a leg over his hip, and he slips inside, and they don’t talk about it, after, but she is brought to orgasm by something other than force and it leaves her shaky and needy in his arms. He’s no better. He buries his head against her chest and shudders a few dry sobs. But they’re still alive, and they have each other.

Two more moons pass in this debauchery. It has been almost a year. The minute Zenos leaves the room, now, and she is upon her brother. She presses him on his back, into the mattress, and fucks him hard and fast and until he’s crying out her name alongside little confessions of love. He loves her. He loves her so much. He doesn’t know what he could ever do without her.

They’re on their sides, legs curled around one another, when the door to the bedroom opens for the final time. Alphinaud is languidly moving his hips and she is begging for him to hurry up when light slides over them and they are caught. Zenos will be told. She is not sure if Zenos will be angry or pleased.

She looks up, hazily, and sees—Thancred. Thancred, whose visage is a hazy memory of happier times and the safety of home. Thancred, who once cared for her as an elder brother.

Alphinaud manages to startle before she does. He pulls out of her, dragging himself up to a sit and pressing himself against the headboard, as far away from Thancred as he can get. His dick is softening but guilty in what stoutness is present. Alisaie knows they both must look like shells of their former selves. Alisaie knows that what they were doing has no easy excuse.

Thancred is bleeding from his shoulder and his one eye is wide with shock. Both of his daggers are drawn.

“Thancred,” Alphinaud says.

Thancred’s face scrunches shut with obvious upset—at them? At their injuries? At their displayed taboo? He says, “Here. Are you two hurt?” He spares them the interrogation and the shame. There is no time.

Alisaie replies, “No, we’re alright,” and Alphinaud replies, “I don’t know how to answer that.”

She points a glare at her brother. They’re bruised, but they can walk.

Alphinaud clarifies, “Thancred. We’ve been raped.”

That’s the understatement of their very long year.

“I saw the Resistance reports,” he says. “I didn’t want them to be true.” The Resistance. The Resistance lives. The Resistance has come for them. He reframes his question, “Can you walk?”

They can.

“You’ve launched an assault on the Castle?” Alisaie asks, with uncertain balance. Thancred picks the lock of her brother’s collar, and then her own. They are free. How did The Resistance get this far? The last time she saw them, all was in tatters and most of the men dead.

“This is covert,” Thancred tells her. “It’s just me, and I’m just here for you.”

Just him, then. She will not be picky in her saviors. The two of them stumble out of the room on unsteady fawn legs, naked and terrified. Thancred has mapped a route between patrols. Alisaie has no idea how he managed to narrow it down to clockwork, but he says nothing, and commands nothing, and they follow him until they are free beneath the cloak of night.

When they are far enough into the wastelands of the salt flats to scream, Alisaie does.

She screams and she screams. She empties her lungs. She scares off the fauna eyeing them and their potential intentions as predators. Thancred makes no attempt to stop her. She screams, and sobs, and cries large, wet, tears, until a bundle of cloth is offered before her.

Her throat is raw when it at last falls silent. She looks up at the gift in front of her. It’s Thancred’s jacket. He’s topless and bare legged in the moonlight, presenting her no small amount of dignity at cost to his own. Alphinaud has been offered his pants, and they drag low over slight hips made slighter with the slim meals of a captive.

The jacket is large enough on Alisaie to look like a dress. She can’t remember the last time she was clothed in something not intended to mock her. She can’t remember the last time she saw Alphinaud clothed at all. She starts crying again. She stumbles forward, and grips Thancred’s arm for support, and he holds her steady, and then Alphinaud’s crying too—the arsehole, making it look like she was the first to fall, like he hasn’t been the crybaby the entire time—

Alisaie scoops up what is left of her ego when Alphinaud collapses halfway through the hike back to the Reach. She shouldn’t feel smug about his exhaustion catching up with him, but she does. She takes great satisfaction in not being the only one beyond the limits of her mind and body. Thancred carries her brother on his back without protest. Thancred tells her to signal if she needs a break.

“Gods above,” Y’shtola says, when she catches sight of the three of them. Alisaie has never known Y’shtola to invoke a god, ever, so she knows she must look beyond mortal saving.

“Help Alisaie,” Thancred grunts to Y’shtola, shouldering Alphinaud down from his back.

Y’shtola is at her side in an instant. Alisaie hears calls for assistance, vaguely, and calls for a chirurgeon, more specifically. The last time Alisaie saw Y’shtola she was bleeding out on the ground, an inch from death. Alisaie finds strength in the sight of her hale and healthy. Y’shtola has recovered. Alisaie will recover too.

She allows her forged family to usher her to safety, and place bandages to her physical wounds. She gladly rests. She eagerly gives herself to safety, and to sleep.

Days pass in a delirium. Alisaie thinks they are drugging her through the worst of the healing. She’s too exhausted to care. No one is hurting her anymore. No one is hurting Alphinaud. She can stay in a blurred haze of medication and safety for as long as they will keep her. There are far worse places to be.

They lessen the medication, eventually. She returns to herself. Alisaie lays on her little cot tucked in the corner of the Reach. There’s barely anyone left. One chirurgeon. Two nurses. Her and Alphinaud are the only people in the entire ward. There’s been no conflict for some time, apparently. There has been no war to fight when one side lies in scraps and anxious, spread-out pockets.

Y’shtola is there. Y’shtola is keeping watch of her. Alisaie remembers the sight of the Miqo'te bleeding from a deep chest wound. She has made a full recovery. Alisaie can make a full recovery too. Y’shtola visits her, kind, ever tactful, not bringing up the horrors lurking at the edges of Alisaie. She tells Alisaie to rest. She stays by her side until Alisaie’s eyes close and her mind circles the drain of unconsciousness.

Y’shtola leaves her. Voices from some distance away perk Alisaie’s ears up but she does not peek. She listens.

“She’s pregnant,” Y’shtola states.

Alisaie’s heart stops. Her mind paces rapidly through the droughts she has been given. She was always, always provided one, but time could stretch and spin in the depths of Ala Mhigo. Something could have failed. Something could have been allowed to take root.

“You told me she wasn’t,” Thancred says.

“I said I wasn’t sure. Her aether was a mess when she got here, and things have developed since then. It’s early. She has time to handle it without risk.”

“Do it,” Thancred says, swiftly.

“…Is what I am assuming she’ll request of me,” Y’shtola cautions, “but I am going to ask, regardless.”

“She’s in no state to handle that question. She doesn’t have to know.”

“Thancred.”

“We can take the burden off her shoulders.”

“Thancred.”

“Y’shtola,” he says, “when I found them, they were lying together.”

Y’shtola pauses. “Them?”

“Yes, the two of them.”

“You’re certain?”

“Alphinaud was inside her,” Thancred hisses, softly, and Alisaie at last feels shame well up in her gut. “If there is even a chance it is his—“ He stops himself just short of saying something cruel of Alisaie and her brother. “—that would be no better than if it was Zenos’ hellspawn.”

Y’shtola has never been an overtly moral woman. When she offers Alisaie a new medication, some unknown concoction to “ward off infection,” Alisaie does not question it. Alisaie suffers through the cramps and then the blood, and she and Y’shtola speak nothing of what they both know to have occurred. Alphinaud is none the wiser. This, at least, Alisaie can spare him.

She heals quickly. Her torture was ever more psychological than physical, to middling results, and so she grows stronger beneath safety and sunshine. She is allowed to walk the shore of the ruins where The Resistance once stood so mightily. Alphinaud joins her, sometimes. They stand side by side and look across the sparkling, clear water. They haven’t spoken much. They know all of what they would say to one another already.

She wakes one morning to find Thancred at her bedside, flipping through a book. Her head tilts towards him.

“Morning,” she murmurs.

“Hey,” he replies.

“Why’re you here?”

“Wanted to chat,” he says. He closes the book.

“About?”

“About next steps,” he tells her. “We’re going back to Eorzea proper. Limsa Lominsa, specifically.”

She blinks. “Not Mor Dhona?”

“Not Mor Dhona,” he confirms.

“For what?”

He pauses. “For you to recover,” he says, “until you’re well enough to make the trip back to Sharlayan.”

She sits up in bed. His hands hover over her, suddenly, like she might collapse amidst his declaration. She bats them away.

“I can’t,” she says.

“You need to go home,” Thancred tells her.

“I won’t.”

“You will,” he says, with no small amount of heat in his voice. “You have been through enough at our hands. Y’shtola, Urianger, and I are resigning as Scions. We should have never allowed you among us in the first place.”

This stings more than any slap across the face from Zenos. “I have bled for Eorzea,” she says, shrill. “I have fought beside you as an equal.”

“And look what has become of you,” he says, harshly.

It’s the truth, she is a sliver of her former self, but he should not rub her face in it. He should be helping her grow back stronger.

“Alphinaud won’t stand for this.”

Alisaie looks over at the other bed, and does not see her brother beneath its blankets. She has slept in. Every inch of her is exhausted.

“Alphinaud has already agreed,” Thancred informs her.

“He,” she says, taking a large breath, “he wouldn’t. He would stay and fight.”

“He has already written to your mother. She will be expecting you.”

Alisaie’s anger flares in her chest. Upset clouds her thoughts. “What about The Resistance?” she says. “We cannot simply abandon Ala Mhigo!”

“The Eorzean Alliance settled on a pact with Garlemald three moons ago,” Thancred explains. “Lyse’s surrender and execution being a primary condition.”

Alisaie’s eyes shimmer.

He says, just to hammer it in, “It’s over.”

Alisaie feels as if she has been suckerpunched. Air comes short to her lungs. Ah, she’s panicking. She hasn’t felt this adrift and out of control in a while. She never once suffered this indignity while under Zenos’ control. She never once thought Lyse would be dead before her.

“Breathe,” Thancred prompts, a steadying hand on her, “Alisaie. I need you to breathe.”

Her lungs ache for hours afterwards.

Alisaie eats dinner alone that night. Y’shtola and Thancred allow her the space to grieve. Alphinaud has been conspicuously silent towards her since their rescue. The longer they have been safe, the further he seems to pull himself from her. 

It soon becomes apparent he is avoiding her. He asks for a room of his own, abandoning her to the vacant medical bay. He stops taking walks with her. He greets her, pleasantly, and then says nothing else to her at all.

Nights are long. She got used to sharing a bed. She is alone now. They’re waiting for her to be strong enough to return to Sharlayan, but she is still under supervision. Y’shtola and Thancred have been arguing, it seems, because they, too, are out of alignment. She catches flickers of their conversations sometimes, late at night, when she is meant to be asleep.

“This is our fault,” and, “They knew the risks,” and, “Y’shtola, how will I face their mother.”

Most nights there is merely a lethal silence.

On one such night, a week before their planned departure, Alisaie gives in to her worst instincts. She shrugs sweaty covers off her body and clambers out of bed. She stalks right down to Alphinaud’s room, in some tucked-away barracks for monks long executed. She raps her knuckles against the door. When he doesn’t open it fast enough, she bangs her fist against it.

The door sweeps open.

Alphinaud hisses, “Alisaie—“

She wraps herself around him.

He is frigid and stonelike in her arms. She doesn’t care. She has missed his skin against hers. She has missed his chest pressed to her own.

“Alisaie,” Alphinaud demands, “Alisaie, you cannot—“

She kisses him. She places her lips against his with desperation she did not realize was welling up inside her. For two weeks, she has been left to rot untouched in her hospital bed. For two weeks, he has not done so much as brushed a hand along her own.

She is greedy and touchstarved. He offers his familiar platitudes of “No,” and, “We cannot,” and, “We are free,” and, “We are free of this.” She walks him back towards the bed. She wants his hands on her. She wants his hands inside of her. They stay pinned to his sides, until they jolt out in disgust.

He shoves her off of him.

She startles from her fervor. She blinks at him as if he has fully struck her. She looks to him, confused.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He says, “Tis our plight no longer.”

It doesn’t feel as if it is no longer their plight. She feels as on edge and as vulnerable as ever. She wants him. He will make her feel better. He has always made her feel better. Since they arrived in Zenos’ palace. Since they were children, even, every event they’ve ever weathered together now soiled with the shadow of their once and forever entanglement.

Alisaie feels ashamed, which makes her feel angry.

“Do not reject me,” she seethes. She has lost complete control over herself. She wants him. She wants only him. He is all she has. He is hers to do with as she likes. They only have each other, after all. Where else would he possibly be if not beneath her?

She pushes him to the bed and crawls atop him. Her eyes are wild. His are scared. She wants to take him as her own. She wants to feel his warmth coat the inside of her, that it might wash the worst of Zenos’ spend and the blood of an unborn child away. She wants it to take root.

“Get off of me,” Alphinaud orders.

“I love you,” she tells him.

“Alisaie, I don’t want this.”

What else on this horrid star was there to even want? Her hands find the tied strings of his sleeppants.

“Alisaie, stop,” Alphinaud yells.

She ignores him. He isn’t fighting her. If this was so despicable, then he would be struggling. If he hated her so much, he was in his rights to hit her. The sheer fact that he hasn’t is proof enough of his continued love for her.

“Alisaie!” Alphinaud screams. He actually screams. It’s loud enough to jar her from her frenzy. She looks up at him, blankly. He’s soft in her hand. He is scared. He is scared of her.

The door to the room slams open.

Alisaie feels strong hands dragging her off of her brother. Alisaie feels herself be scraped off the bed as if she is in some distant, beside-herself body. She is tugged back against a broad chest. Hands grip her wrists and arms bind themselves around her body. She feels mummified in the embrace. She feels the instinct to fight—to kick, to bite, to form a scream of her own.

“No,” Thancred demands, unrelenting and all around her.

The fight leaves her as quickly as it had risen. Her body falls limp.

The room is silent and sober, then. Alphinaud is fastening his sleeppants. He smooths at a crease in the leg of them, as if he might preen himself back to a sense of normalcy. He says nothing. He won’t look at her.

She awaits admonishment. Thancred has been blissfully content to keep their secret between him and Y’shtola. He seemed fine with maintaining things as some desperate, out-of-mind mistake they made in the depths of an Imperial Prince’s depravity, but she knows she has ruined his willingness to look the other way. He does not release her. His head tips forward, and she feels the blunt press of his face against the back of her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, his voice thick with upset, “I’ve failed you both.”

There is no further discussion. Alphinaud is told to lock his door. She is sent back to bed. Thancred stays at her side, though whether he is guarding her from herself or from Alphinaud remains unclear. Neither of them sleep. The sun rises, and Thancred briefly excuses himself to speak to Y’shtola.

He returns. He pulls a chair up to her bedside, and she knows that the reckoning for her actions of the past year has arrived.

Thancred is silent for a long moment.

“Get it over with,” she mutters. She is sitting up in bed once more. She picks at the skin around her nails, and refuses to look at him.

“Alisaie,” he starts.

“Get it over with.”

He gifts her relief in the form of the inevitable.

He states: “I need to talk to you about what I saw when I found you.”

Alisaie’s stomach twists. “I know,” she says, and then it’s all coming up her esophagus like vomit, “I know. I know it was wrong. I don’t know what we were thinking. He forced us, he was forcing us, but—it felt better, afterwards, if we—“

“I get it,” he says. But how could he? He’s never been held against his will. He has no siblings. He has nothing and no one to form a co-dependent relationship with. The closest thing they share is the unbordered idea that they are, without defense, whores.

“You do not understand,” she says, softly.

Thancred is once again quiet. He looks no more eager to be here than her, and she wishes he would simply let them both be at peace and leave. He’s stubborn, though. He is determined to see his point through to the heart of her. She is so fragile. She will admit it. She has been shackled in darkness for so long. She does not know what will happen when he exposes her to the bright, bitter sunlight of her own desires.

“…Can I tell you how I got my Mark?”

It is not what she was expecting him to ask. His face is so sad, so griefstruck, she thinks some form of bile might, actually, rise up from her throat. She wants to vanish from her bedsheets. She wants to kick her blanket off and start running.

Thancred looks expectant, though. She hesitates. She slowly nods her head.

“I was sixteen,” he says, without further request. “Too young to get them, everyone thought so. ‘Spycraft and survival’ was my official designation. No one knew what that meant. I hadn’t furthered an academic field. I hadn’t presented a thesis. My actions were classified to the eyes of the public. The best that people came up with was some fantasy of a calamity-halting espionage mission behind the scenes, though the reality could not be further from the truth.”

“…What did you do?” Alisaie asks.

“I was tasked with extracting information from a target in Dalmasca,” Thancred says, “and I was raped in the line of duty.”

Alisaie goes still. She looks at him, sadly, not sure what to say.

“Oh,” she offers, like that is any comfort at all.

“The Mark was an exercise in pity,” Thancred tells her. “I didn’t want to accept it, but your grandsire told me I should turn a misfortune into a source of pride. I had done right by Sharlayan. I had done my job well. I needed to grieve my pain, but not wallow in it—rape was simply torture with more steps. That was the Sharlayan attitude, at least.” Thancred pauses. “But I was not from Sharlayan,” he says. He waits another beat. “And I was a child.”

There is silence between them.

She tells him, because her heart aches for him, “I’m sorry.”

He ignores this. He looks upon her. “A great evil has been done to you, Alisaie.”

She says, “I know. I will survive.”

He tells her, “I don’t want you to diminish this in your mind. I want you to acknowledge the depth of the harm.” He swallows. “It’s the only way. It was the only thing that closed the wound in me.”

“I won’t claim this as something more than it is,” Alisaie tells him. “It was an attempt to break me emotionally, but I am Sharlayan, and we don’t—we don’t place weight on such things. I am sorry for your pain. I am sure it was vicious. But I am alive, and I have survived, and I will not tempt being consumed by shame where I feel none.”

“Oh, so you’re fine, are you,” he says, harshly.

“I am now that I am safe.”

“Alisaie, you were having sex with your brother when I found you.”

Thancred does not mince words. Alisaie narrows her eyes at him. “We did that of our own power in a situation otherwise devoid of it.”

“And I accept that,” Thancred informs her, “but I need you to know that kind of decision is not made because you were having a healthy, unemotional response to your frequent and violent assault.”

He’s right and she knows it.

“I said it was a mistake,” Alisaie says, stronger. “I was seeking power denied to me. It was wrong and I’m sorry for it. Alphinaud will likely tell you the same.”

“Then why did you attempt to rape him?”

The accusation hits her so hard she sees stars. She blinks, as if clearing a looming haze of unconsciousness. She blinks, as if she hasn’t quite understood what he has told her.

“That wasn’t—“ she says. “I didn’t—“

“You know exactly what you were attempting,” Thancred says.

“We were—“ She defends herself with a rising desperation. “He and I—It was a slip, a desire for a return to our relative normal. It won’t happen again—“

“He was yelling for you to stop,” Thancred presses.

“—He didn’t have a problem with it before,” Alisaie snaps.

“You are no longer bound to a before, and he is allowed to change his mind.”

“He did not so much as hesitate, when we started,” she says, which isn’t quite fair, but she’s angry and she does not enjoy being painted as some relentless aggressor. Alphinaud has spent moons begging her for her body and she will not stand to be shoved aside now that circumstances no longer require her comfort. She is the one who has been used. She is the one who has been rejected.

“Alisaie,” Thancred says, and she opens her mouth to once more defend herself, so he says, again, before she can argue, “Alisaie. You know what that was. It cannot happen again.”

“He kissed me first!” she calls, like a criminal deflecting blame, like a child taddling on her brother to her parents. “He did what Zenos asked! He didn’t even fight it!” She is panicking again. Tears fill her eyes. Snot floods her nose. “He broke first!” She cries, loud enough for the whole Reach to hear, “He broke first!”

“He is as blameless as you,” Thancred informs her. His reluctance to comfort her sets a fire beneath her body.

“It’s not fair!” She is still yelling. “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”

“I know,” Thancred tells her. “I know it’s not. Let it out. Let it out. Let it go. You’ll feel better. You’ll feel better, one day, Alisaie. You’ll be whole once more.”

Thancred leaves her curled on her side. She has cried whatever tears her body can produce and then heaved several more dry sobs for good measure. The desert night is frigid. The world is so cold, alone. The world is so miserable and wide. She misses when it was not, she realizes. She misses the weight of a collar around her neck. She misses her place in Zenos’ bed. She misses Alphinaud, tethered beside her. She gives herself to the insanity of nostalgia for the long days at the foot of a prince who sought only to destroy her. She misses being a martyr. She misses feeling so strong, so noble, so unbothered, beneath his attention. She was contained there. She should not have let Thancred steal her from the depths of captivity. She should not have let Thancred pry her off her brother. She should not have let Y’shtola slip her the purging medicine. It would have been Alphinaud’s. She knows it was Alphinaud’s. It could have only been Alphinaud’s. It could not have been Zenos’ royal heir or the bastard of any random, passing guard. It could only have been Alphinaud’s because she had Alphinaud the most. She loved Alphinaud the most. Alphinaud was hers to have and hers to love and hers to own. Alphinaud belonged to her. Alphinaud had always belonged to her.

Someone places a hand on her shoulder. She snaps from her stupor, and rips herself away from the touch.

“Easy,” Y’shtola cautions, as if she is an unruly chocobo.

“Y’shtola,” Alisaie says, sighing. It’s late. “Hello.”

“This will pass.”

“I have been made aware,” Alisaie says.

“There are those you might speak with,” Y’shtola informs her, without passion but not devoid of empathy, “when we return to Sharlayan.”

“I want my brother,” she says, voice cracking high. She knows the truth: Alphinaud does not want her. Alphinaud wants nothing to do with her.

“I think it best if you two spend some time apart.”

They prepare for the trip. Alphinaud seems to find himself quite taken with Thancred now that he is free to spread his attention where he pleases. Alisaie tries to regain normalcy. She tries to reel in her worst thoughts. She is certain Thancred has shared the truth of his Mark with her brother, too, and she hates the sickening feeling in her gut that churns at the thought of them bonding over their own victimhood. Alphinaud was not a victim. He was a survivor. They are survivors. They are fine now. They were hurt and they were healed and now they are fine.

They leave the Reach to its fate. The Resistance is over. What is left is a pathetic excuse of a holdout for justice that will never come.

Urianger awaits them in Limsa Lominsa. Alisaie and Alphinaud step off the airship shells of their former selves. Alphinaud hugs their fellow Elezen. Urianger hugs him back, and Alisaie swallows a swell of jealousy that should not exist.

Urianger asks permission to touch her, next, which she hates so much she throws every onze of her strength into embracing him too. It feels hollow. Her nails dig into his back. She’s crying, again.

“Hush,” Urianger tells her, like he used to when he was a boy and she was a whining toddler. “You’re safe now, my lady.”

They part. Thancred, Y’shtola, and Urianger step aside to talk business and travel plans, ever positioning themselves as the guilt-ridden adults above her. Alisaie is left standing beside her brother.

“…I apologize,” Alisaie tells him, because she hasn’t, yet, and they won’t get into a fight about it in public. Her voice is so very hollow. There is nothing genuine left inside of her. She echoes like a vacant cave. She whistles with the wind. “I hurt you, and we’re both worse for it. I have not been myself.”

“I understand,” Alphinaud says, confessing, “some days I fear I will never be myself again.”

They return to Old Sharlayan by boat. It takes two weeks. She spills the contents of every dinner over the side of the ship, and Urianger only makes the mistake of comforting her in the aftermath once. She bites at the hands that seek to soothe her. She kicks and snarls at any who come too close. She takes the initiative—and preemptively shuns Alphinaud from her side.

He does not chase after her attention, even this deeply packed in close-quarters, and she feels stabbed with the deliberate abandonment. She feels so terribly alone.

Sharlayan greets them like a death knell.

Alisaie does not know what she expects when they return to their family estate. Alisaie has not been here in over two years. She is left standing dumbly before her mother and father, Alphinaud at her side, in a home that has not been her own in some time.

Thancred, Y’shtola, and Urianger kneel before her parents. It has been discussed, clearly, because they are in alignment as they press their chins to their collarbones and grovel not for forgiveness, but for simple apology. They have failed. They will not be absolved as long as they shall live.

“We shall endeavor to not desecrate thy family further,” Urianger is saying, emotion strong in his voice. “We shall depart in silence and leave thee to peace, and recovery, and some distant morrow’s wholeness.”

“Go,” Alisaie’s father orders. “And be lucky I do not ask to have your Marks burned from you.”

The three of them stand, and then they are, actually, going. They pass by Alisaie without so much as a goodbye.

“Hey,” Alisaie calls. Urianger flinches at her voice, but they altogether ignore her. She says, “Hey. Stop. You’re leaving?” She says, louder, “You’re just going to leave us? After everything?”

Thancred is the only one who meets her eye.

“After everything,” he says, “you should be welcome to be rid of us.”

“That’s not true!” she yells. She looks at her father. “That’s not true! Thancred saved us! They have all protected us! We have been treated like family since the day we arrived in Eorzea!”

“Go to your room, both of you,” her father orders. Go to her room, as if it was even hers at all. Go to her room, as if she still possessed the innocent blessing of childhood.

Alisaie looks to her mother. She is beautiful, in the way she has always been, her composure betrayed only by the red ringing her eyes and the teartracks adorning her cheeks. Alisaie hates the sight of her cowing to her husband. Alisaie hates them both.

“Don’t just—“ Alisaie feels as if the foundation beneath her has been ripped away. She refaces her father. “You can’t just take them from us!”

Her father can, and her father does. Urianger, Y’shtola, and Thancred depart without further protest. Alphinaud does not offer them a final goodbye. He does not even look up from the floor.

Then, her Eorzean family is gone. Her grandsire’s chosen vanish. Forever, she realizes. They will not be coming back for her nor for Alphinaud. They have failed, and they are being banished in punishment.

It’s over.

She curls up atop the plush mattress of her youth. Her room smells musty from disuse, preserved in every way from her Studium days. The graduation her father did not attend feels so very far away. Her mother takes up a place at the foot of her bed. Her mother sits, and lets her fold in upon herself, and says nothing at all until she very much does.

“We’re going to have you speak to someone,” her mother voices, at last. Alisaie does not know what her family has been informed by letter since she went missing but she imagines they have been conveyed the worst of it, the reality of it, because her mother looks as if she is just barely keeping herself together at the sight of her. “An Archon, the best of her craft. She is well versed in the complexities of the mind. Your case will be unique, I’m sure, but circumstances are relative, and the emotions they produce make similar imprints. You shall find resolution to your past.” This is no comfort at all. Alisaie’s problems are present now. She has been denied her brother and stripped of her forged family, now. Her mother continues, “But between those talks, you may tell me anything you might need to confess, and request anything you might desire in my power. I am—I am here for you. I will always be here for you.”

Alisaie wishes she wasn’t. Alisaie assumes her father is stationed in Alphinaud’s room in a mirror to her own predicament. She thinks, for the first time in her life, she might prefer her father to her mother as a conversation partner. Her mother looks so weak above her, her lip quivering like she might burst into tears. She is fragile. She has never suffered an indignity beyond a political scandal. She doesn’t know. How could she possibly know?

“I never lost hope,” her mother says, “but I must confess, Alisaie, I did come to terms with what I thought was the worst to become of you, and this seems worse still.”

“I’m here,” she tells her mother. “It was violence, but I am hardened to violence. I am of Sharlayan.”

“Of Sharlayan?” her mother echoes.

“I placed no stock in the psychological intention. I was stronger than the most depraved of it.”

Her mother is quiet for a long moment.

Her mother says, at last, “I do not wish to deny you your strength.” It takes her a long time to continue. “However,” she says, “you should know that being of Sharlayan carries no special defense towards said depravity. It might be strictly violence in a legal definition, here, but it is still warfare upon the soul.”

Alisaie stares at the wall her bed is butted up against. “Thancred said roughly the same,” Alisaie notes, limply.

“Aye,” her mother agrees, with no wrath towards the ward they once shared a home with, “he’s lived a long life for his age. He would know better than me.”

Alisaie assumes her mother was perhaps there when Thancred returned home to be declared an Archon. She probably knows the truth of his Mark. Alisaie’s heart calls out for Thancred. Alisaie regrets ever resenting him for his time with Alphinaud. Alisaie wants him back. Alisaie does not wish to once again be alone.

“You should sleep,” her mother prompts. “It will be nice to wake up in your own bed, I’m sure.”

“Goodnight,” Alisaie tells her. It’s cruel in its bluntness.

“Goodnight, my love,” her mother says. “All shall heal in time. I am happy you are home. May you never be stolen from me again.”

Alisaie wishes she would just leave already, but when she does, Alisaie regrets ever craving for it, too. The silence is worse. She finds herself craving her collar again.

Alisaie doesn’t sleep. Hours pass, and then there is a knock at her door.

It’s her father, probably. He had not said so much as a word to her since sending her to her room. He carried the same inkling of shame to him as Thancred had—guilt, leaking from the simple posture of his body. Guilt for all he has failed to prevent. She slips out of her bed and opens the door, bracing herself for the brunt of his paternal anxieties.

Alphinaud is before her.

She stares at him, wide-eyed, not sure what he wants, scolding herself for hoping it is her, her touch, her body. She wants to pull him into the room and cling to him until they are melded like materia. Until their parents cannot pry them apart.

“—I don’t want sex,” Alphinaud states, flat and fast, the assumption of which makes Alisaie burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” she says, she rushes to say, but she’s not, really, he’s right, he knew she desired the worst from him from the moment she saw him, “please, forgive me.” This, at least, is the truth: she wants forgiveness. She wants them to be at ease again. She has never gone this long without him. Her entire life, he has always been there, and now he scalds at her touch.

“Can we just,” he looks scared to suggest it, “can we lie together? In the literal sense.”

His body is warm and chaste beside hers in bed. They do not entangle themselves in one another’s grasp. They do not beg for closer contact. They do not grasp at one another for control. They are the ones in control now. They have all the power in the grand, ruthless world. They choose it to lie shoulder to shoulder, and to gaze upon the ceiling without conversation.

Alphinaud falls asleep. Alisaie thinks of how easy it would be to take advantage of him. She thinks of how simple it would be to do harm to any of them. She need only to take a knife to her brother, her father, her mother, herself. The fact that every beating vein in their bodies was a mere prick from death made her feel scraped over and vulnerable. The fact that anyone managed to live at all when they are so ever close to violence is a miracle unto its own.

Alisaie slips into a restless sleep beside her brother. It is long, and it is comfortable, and it is a first step to a peace long denied her.

The Archon is good at her job. Alisaie works hard to untangle herself from the chains at Zenos’ throne and from the touch of her brother. She does not hold back the truth—Alphinaud is seeing the same woman, and he is ever willing to spill details. The Archon does not pass judgement on her actions. The Archon offers guidance. Alisaie has stability pried back from the dungeons of her heart. Alisaie begins to feel a promised whole.

Alphinaud brightens, and then he blooms. He always took to Sharlayan more than Alisaie did. He falls right back into research and into friendships. He goes out for drinks. He lets people touch him without rejection. He smiles.

A girl his age asks him on a date, and he accepts, and Alisaie only cries a little at what he is striving so ardently to forget.

Moons pass, and then years. Alphinaud makes it plain that he intends to go for his Mark before he follows in their fathers footsteps as a Forum elect. It is as their parents always intended for him. It is like nothing ever happened to him at all.

They both hit their second growth. Gender takes them in different directions, and then all at once she no longer shares a matching body with her twin. He is taller than her. His face is sharper. His shoulders, broader. He cuts his braid. He stops wearing blue. It hurts her, to see them grow apart. It’s like they were never one at all.

Conversely to Alphinaud, Alisaie is not pressured to do much of anything at all, which leaves her lonesome and brooding most days, wandering the estate until she can bear its borders no longer. She often struts into the streets with a sour expression and unkempt hair. She is fine. She is as strong and as healed as her brother. Why, then, does she fail to thrive? Why, then, does she miss the boy her brother used to be?

She marches the markets of Sharlayan with no direction or point. She does not look where she is going.

A girl, a young Midlander girl, barely beyond infanthood, barrels into her legs. Alisaie stumbles over her but manages to catch her balance. The girl carries no same coordination. The girl falls back onto her rump at the impact.

The girl starts to cry.

“All’s well, all’s well,” a warm voice says, leaning down to scoop up the toddler into an awaiting hold. An Elezen man lifts the child into his long, cradling arms. He bounces her a few times. “Hush. Hush, my lady.” He looks up at Alisaie. “Apologies—“

Alisaie makes a startled, weak noise at the sight of the girl’s guardian. Urianger stares back at her. Both of them freeze. Both of them know they are forbidden to be in the presence of the other.

“Where’s the troublemaker toddled off to this time?” a wry voice asks. “Can’t take our eyes off you for a second, can we, Ryne?”

Thancred is all smiles until he catches sight of Alisaie too. It is clear it takes him a moment to place her face, her body tall and sharp and unfamiliar even to her. The girl he knew has been long shed. He is a changed man, too. The child in Urianger’s arms reaches blindly out for Thancred. The child babbles at him like—like a father. Thancred looks much older than she remembers him to be. There are creases at his eyes. There is a slack to his cheeks. The years treat Thancred’s Hyur body worse than Urianger’s Elezen heritage treats his. Thancred is no longer pretty. He looks aged in a way Alisaie cannot press a pulse on, but in a way that still manages to suit him.

“Alisaie,” Thancred says, and his voice croaks. People politely shuffle around where they’ve stanced themselves in the center of the walking street.

“Hello,” she says. It’s all she says. They stare at each other with no plan for how to continue.

Urianger shakes his head, as if warding off the fear trimming the trio of them. Her father is not here. All is well. “Alisaie,” he says, warmly, as warm as he spoke to the girl who is almost certainly his daughter, “Thou seems hale.”

Alisaie’s focus is on the girl. She’s not sure why her focus is on the girl. She hasn’t seen the two men in years, and her focus is on the girl.

“I am,” Alisaie confirms. The child looks upon Alisaie with bright, blue eyes. She’s straw blonde and round-cheeked. Happy, where she smiles from Urianger’s arms. “I’ve been fine. I’ve been—I’m sorry. The girl. Is she yours?”

“Aye,” Urianger says. He holds up his daughter proudly. Alisaie glances at Thancred. Urianger tracks her gaze, and voices her assumption: “His as well.”

“Are you two—“ She stops herself. The answer is obvious. “Ah,” she says, instead. “Congratulations.”

“Indeed. Thancred is the shine of the stars against the facet of mine heart,” Urianger says. “And mayhap he hath always been.”

“Let’s not get hysterical,” Thancred says. “I have ever strived to make myself no one’s first choice.”

“T’was mine.”

“Well, yes, but let it be known that you have never been a man of taste.”

Their banter is easy and nostalgic. Alisaie forgot what it sounded like. Tears form in her eyes. The two of them have been so permanent, in her mind. Her vision of them has ever been cemented in the sight of them shamefully slipping away from her. Ordered from her sight for their failures. And so they have been, set in her thoughts, in her worst memories, for years, and yet—here they were, alive, living, having had lived, unrestrained by Alisaie’s paralyzing memory, here, with each other, together, together, with a child.

“Please do not weep,” Urianger asks of her, worry heavy in his tone.

Alisaie’s face flexes against the offense of a denied sob. 

“We should go,” Thancred murmurs. “I see we’ve upset you.”

“No,” she says, gasps, really. “No. Please. Don’t go.”

They get tea together in a small cafe. Alisaie pulls herself together enough to keep polite conversation. Alisae retains normalcy as they discuss the obvious topics: Alphinaud’s public success, Alisaie’s apparent health, Urianger and Thancred’s new lives, their new child, what turns out to be their new marriage.

“So you stayed in Sharlayan,” she observes.

They nod. Urianger says, “Tis home, or it shall be now.”

Thancred admits, “We didn’t have anyplace better to be, and then this one made herself known to us.”

Thancred ruffles the cornsilk atop his daughter’s head. They’ve been here all along, then. Alisaie feels as if they have been so close and yet so far from her.

She asks, “Where’s Y’shtola?”

They both draw a little still at that. Ryne slaps her chubby hands against the tabletop from where she sits in Urianger’s lap, and babbles, “Da’.”

“She pledged herself to return,” Urianger informs Alisaie.

“To Eorzea?”

“To Ala Mhigo.”

Alisaie processes this. “…Ala Mhigo? To what end?”

“Revolution,” Thancred says, simply. “Presumably. If they’re hatching another revolt, they certainly would not tell Sharlayan. Her letters are vague with purpose, but she finds time to write once every season or so.”

“Why?”

Alisaie is surprised at her own confused, pointed candor. She doesn’t understand it. Why would Y’shtola go back? Her and her peers returned to Sharlayan failures, surely, and Alisaie could imagine that stinging at Y’shtola’s pride, could even imagine Y’shtola tucking her tail between her legs and returning to the colony, to her master and to her childhood cave, but—to Ala Mhigo? To a country with no hope against its conquerors? To a place where they lost both Papalymo and Lyse? To the place Alisaie very nearly lost her own brother? To a place that still harbored Zenos, strong upon his Imperial throne?

“There’s work to be done,” Thancred says, calm, but there’s something in the way he says it that implies he himself and maybe Urianger too are not so free of Scion business as they might appear.

Urianger takes a long sip of his tea. He finishes the cup off, and sets it down before himself.

“Alisaie,” he says, “t’was a pleasant fortune to stumble into thy path. I can only hope thou art as well as thou appear.”

He notes what they all know: she has deliberately avoided discussing herself, and they have not pried, and now their teatime is at its end. They probably think it is not their right to pick at her. She has been through enough, but she has already been through it. Why, then, can she not move forward? Why does she feel green at the sight of them having carried on without her?

They stand, and Urianger side-hugs her with the arm not holding his daughter. Alisaie does not hesitate to touch him nor be touched by him. Alisaie lifts her finger to Ryne’s hand, and feels the profound baby-strength of it clutch at the digit.

Urianger prompts, “Ryne. Can you say A-li-saie?”

“‘Zay!” she chimes back.

“Close enough. Good work, kid,” Thancred praises.

It’s his turn to embrace Alisaie. He holds her for longer. She clings to him. He squeezes her back.

He asks, voice so low it is nearly inaudible, “Are you truly well?”

“Yes,” she replies.

He takes a breath of relief. “We’re here for you. We’re still here for you, should you ever need it.”

She does not doubt it.

She says her final goodbyes and then they are gone. She says goodbye, and then she is alone all over again.

Moons pass. They continue to do so, no matter what Alisaie might do in the meantime. Alisaie cannot shake a restlessness that settles on her shoulders. To the untrained eye, she is more active. To those who know her, she paces the halls like a caged dog.

Alphinaud proposes to his girlfriend and Alisaie welcomes her into their family with open arms. The way the woman looks at her is bright and kind and devoid of the truth. If she knew, she would think of her as filthy and ruined and broken and all the terrible, horrid things Alisaie thinks of herself at her worst. Alisaie’s father and mother seem content with the reality of their children’s captivity being kept a family secret. Alphinaud seems more than resigned to let it fade into his past.

Alisaie eats dinner with her family. Alphinaud’s future bride dines with them. They eat off porcelain and silver. They open well-aged wine, and Alisaie notices when Alphinaud’s beloved passes over the drink and, ever so subtly, presses her fingertips to her stomach.

Alisaie seethes in anger that night. Something is wrong with her. Something is so terribly wrong with her. She is blind with jealousy. She is acting possessive and unkind to a woman who shall be her sister. Alphinaud does not deserve her clinging at the edges of him like a ghost. Her family does not deserve her haunting the grounds of the estate like a spectre of a daughter who simply cannot move on.

Alisaie packs her bag in a manic state. Alisaie brings only the essentials. Alisaie gathers everything together, and then knocks on her brother’s door.

Alphinaud opens it, and she kisses him.

She knows when a kiss is given and when it is stolen. She drags this one from his lips like a jealous, crazed rogue. She pulls back. He does not grow angry. He shuts his eyes. Then, after a deep breath, he opens them. He looks down upon her like she has failed a test she has been studying for years to pass.

He wipes his lips clean of her with his hand.

“Never again,” he says.

He moves to shut the door. She stops it with her boot.

“I’m leaving,” she tells him.

“Leaving?” he repeats, confused. His hand increases its grip on the edge of the door. “To where?”

“Ala Mhigo,” she says, excited, “to rejoin The Resistance.”

She hates the weary look of pity on his features.

“No,” he says.

“Yes,” she replies.

“Alisaie,” he says, and he sounds exhausted with her. She, who has done nothing but remind him of the worst of himself. She, who has done nothing but drain him for years. “Alisaie, you cannot be serious.”

“I am,” she says. “Thancred and Urianger told me Y’shtola is there, right now, working against The Empire.”

Alphinaud looks both directions down the hall. It is as if he expects their father to be lurking, ready to pounce on them as if they are children and not grown adults. He lowers his voice, and hisses, “You’ve been talking with Thancred and Urianger?”

“Yes,” she says, breathless, “Alphinaud. We can go. We can still make this right. We can still fight.”

He looks as if he is about to cry. “Is that what this is about?” he asks. “Revenge? Petty vengeance?”

“Justice,” she says, “for Ala Mhigo.”

“For Ala Mhigo or for yourself?”

“For us,” she says.

“For you,” he corrects. “I want no part in this.”

“Why not?” she questions, loud enough to make him look down the hall again. She does not fear being too loud. “Come, now, brother. You cannot look me in the eye and call yourself satisfied with our lot.”

He narrows his eyes. “I have a fiancée,” he whispers, harshly. “I will, one day very soon, have a wife, and one further day a child, and so on, and so forth, until I at last find peace in my grave. So if you are going to make a grand showing of your exit I ask that you please leave us out of it.”

“Who? You and this wife who in you have failed to confide the truth?” Alisaie asks.

“What would I even say?” Alphinaud snaps back. “That I fucked my sister without remorse? It is done. I have carried on.” Unlike you goes unvoiced.

“You’re just going to lie to her for the rest of your life?” Alisaie accuses. “What did you even tell her? That you simply sat in a gaol for shy of a year?”

“And that I retained a perfectly natural, abstinate relationship with my sister in doing so,” Alphinaud says. “What else were you expecting, Alisaie? I am going for my Mark. I have a future in politics. I have a home, here, and I will not allow you to ruin it.”

He says he wants her gone in too many useless words. She is a liability, she realizes. She can expose him at any time. She is an anchor to a bitter past. One he despises. One he loves, still, maybe. But an anchor nonetheless.

“That’s it, then?” She repeats: “Until you at last find peace in your grave?”

He sighs, slow and weak.

“It’s a worthy life,” he tells her, and that is the end of it. 

They do not offer one another any further goodbye.

Alisaie steals a small fortune from the family coffers and makes for the sea. The sunrise greets her, its rays warm on her face. Alphinaud has not threatened to stop her. She realizes, distantly, that Alphinaud wants her gone. Alphinaud wants to move on and she will no longer deny him the ability.

She takes the boat. She wanders through the familiar streets of Limsa, and then Gridania. She crosses the wall still controlled by the Alliance in a brokerage of tenuous peace. She strolls through desert and red rocks. She tastes salt in the air. She finds the glamour blocking access to the Reach, and she presses through.

She stands before The Resistance with a sword at her waist and a wild look in her eyes. A dozen weapons are pulled on her. She is tackled to the ground without a fight. She is brought before a leader she does not recognize. She is questioned, to which she replies only in assurance she is here for the cause. She is here for justice. Their pain is her pain, the rape of the land is the rape of her body, their vengeance tastes bloody and copper in her mouth too.

They seem unnerved by her. She doesn’t know why. She is passionate and strong, ready to die, and when they release her she stands tall above them. She is the only Elezen there.

A figure cuts through the crowd.

Y’shtola steps before her with a tight frown. She looks older, even older than Thancred, her face weathered in the sun.

She says, “Absolutely not.”

Alisaie replies, “I can make my own decisions.”

“You’ve made the wrong one.”

Y’shtola has no power to stop her at the end of the day, as much as she attempts to discourage her presence. The Resistance puts Alisaie to work. She works so hard. She buzzes at the edges of meetings, eager for skirmishes that are few and far between. Y’shtola keeps an eye on her. Y’shtola acts as if she is but a single wrong-tossed pebble from shattering.

Revolution is hard work. Two years pass in bondage. Two more years, just two more years, Ala Mhigo has been under the yoke for so long—what is two more years? Just a little longer and they shall all be free. Word of a looming, renewed revolt begins to spread. Hope flickers. The Empire stares down upon them from metallic, grim architecture and offers no reaction to their plight.

Alisaie feels full with a duty found. She is a Scion. She was always supposed to be a Scion. There is work to be done, and she is here to do it.

There is a commotion at the entrance to the Reach at the end of her third summer in Ala Mhigo. The heat is brutal. The sky above is stunningly blue. Y’shtola’s ears perk up as guards rush to the entrance. Alisaie sets down the supply crates she was helping carry, draws her sword, and joins the gathered insurgents.

A man looms tall above the Hyurs and the Sunseekers and most of the Hellsguard.

Alisaie’s brother lifts his chin before the crowd. He stands, proud, his eyes scanning the amassed Resistance members. They settle upon her. They find what they have been searching for, maybe for some time.

“Alphinaud,” she says. She doesn’t believe it.

He nods. His pride leaves him. He looks shamed, suddenly. His shoulders curl in on themselves.

“Alisaie,” he says. It seems as if he has more to say, but it gets stuck in his throat.

She asks, “What are you doing here?” She infers, “Are you here for me? You must know I am far beyond return.”

“I’ve come to join you.”

She doesn’t quite believe this either. She can’t bring herself to run and hug him, not when his denial of their past still lingers so fresh in her blood.

“Your child,” she says, because she knows there is a child. She knows he wants the child. She knows he does, she assumes he conceived it on purpose, to claim some stake in his own masculinity, to tie him to a country and to a fate he has now so easily abandoned.

“Our father seemed very keen for another chance to raise a son who might mind him,” Alphinaud says in place of whole explanation.

“A boy?” Alisaie asks.

“Yes.” Alphinaud glances at the eyes upon him. Alisaie honestly forgot the crowd was present in the rush of him before her. “You’re an aunt.”

This brings her no sweetness. She looks around at the grand walls of the Reach. They tower above her. She notes, “You should be with him, and with your wife.” He should be aiming for his Forum seat. He should be earning his Mark.

“There’s work to be done,” he tells her, and he’s right, there is. There is always work to be done. He is here to help her. He is here to work through it by her side.

She feels as if they are sharing a dream. It is, objectively, a delusion. It is, objectively, an illness left to rot inside them both. A co-dependency. A folie à deux. But they are together again. That is the most important thing of all. And there is simply so much to be done.

“You two.” Y’shtola’s voice is crisp, echoing up into the canyon. She waves at them. “With me.”

She pulls them from their audience. She sequesters them into the corner of the medical bay, presently empty, as it had been so many years ago.

“There is no peace for you in Ala Mhigo,” Y’shtola informs them. “Whatever you are searching to salve your wounds, you shall not find it here.”

“I want to bleed,” Alisaie says. “I want to feel it. I’m tired of seeking peace. I want to know my pain and I want to feel it working through my veins.”

“I’ve known peace,” Alphinaud says, simply, “and it was no salve.”

Y’shtola takes this as confirmation of his intent to stay. She agrees to let Alphinaud remain with only a mild, wary warning that he will not feel Sharlayan comfort for some time. She says, to Alisaie, only, “His room is his own. Respect that, or we will have conflict this insurgency simply does not need.”

Alisaie is in no place to be offended nor ashamed. She nods.

Y’shtola leaves them to each other. Alisaie lifts her arms to her brother. He hesitates, and then musters all his strength to embrace her in turn. He has not touched her, truly touched her, in years. He was so scared to even look at her for so long. She felt such misery existing as a looming source of his distress. He offers her no blame now. He holds her tight. She forgot what it felt like to feel him against her. She forgot what it was like to feel real, physical love.

“Missed you,” he murmurs into her temple. The hair is shorn tight to her scalp, there. Both their braids are gone. They once again match.

“I missed you, brother,” she replies, because he is her brother first before he is anything else, if he even is anything else. They float on some unspecified island. They bask in presence long-repulsed. Whatever they are to one another, it defies the container they have placed it in. Whatever they are, it roars loud and pure.

“Ala Mhigo shall be free,” he states. “I’ll ensure it.”

“I’ll bring you The Prince's head,” she replies.

Which, of course, makes his mouth split into a wide grin at the mere pledge.

He is unwell in a way that makes her happy. He is unwell in a way she has suffered to see him stuff down and struggle through. He is unwell, pupils blown, mind scattered, decisions very, very wrong, but so is she, unwell, and so they are unwell together, and so they will be unwell together, until they are actually whole, and actually hale, and actually well. She will feel the sickness with her whole heart until its wound scars over or they both die of blood loss. Whichever comes for them first. Whichever will accept them into its arms.

She will rise with him from the abyss or let it swallow them, hands clasped. She carries no fear. It has long been stripped of her. She feels only pain, now. She feels it harsh and true. She feels it run its course. She feels it begin, at last, to scab over.