![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fandom: FFXIV
Summary: Snowballed headcanon! NOW OFFICIALLY OVER FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS, SOB.
Chapter Summary: Thancred working on making sense of funny concepts like "I own furniture", fluffy fluff, and mood whiplash.
Warnings: Mild swearing, brainwashed crazy, pre-industrial age standards becoming obvious.
Urianger beat Louisoix in with a similar stack of books, and had apparently kept track of the journal from before; Louisoix was in and out, distracted and giving some apologies for dealing with “politics” and clearing up what'd happened to the councils, but his prediction turned out true – by evening, the clammy, sunken patch was gone, and there was a last incident of one of the trainees changing sheets and blankets.
None of the food was anything notable, but he went through more of it than he'd expected, and found himself passing out on the books more often than not; he wasn't sure, but he suspected that Louisoix had done some of the healing while he was asleep.
He had a very surreal drowsy moment when the door opened to Inspector Rigaud; the Elezen looked a little ragged, but apparently hadn't been one of the severe injuries, and was stiff and uncomfortable as he stood in the door. Everything was catching up enough that Thancred couldn't bring himself to have the energy to do more than give the door a bleary, tired look.
“I have heard how the forward mission went; you've adequately acquitted yourself.”
The Inspector left almost as fast as he'd come, and Thancred took quiet, smug pride in the amount of discomfort the man had at what passed for an admission that he wasn't an enemy and had actually proven it.
Y'shtola had a foray through checking on him; she seemed content with his condition, but drew the curtains to the point it was hard to tell there was anything outside, and arranged for a small side lamp that he could use to read by. It took him a few bits of sleeping, waking up, eating, and reading until he fell asleep again to realize that it made it incredibly hard to keep track of time, and he had a suspicion that might've been the point; it was dumb luck if he was awake when the bells chimed the hours, and at that point, he'd completely lost track of which cycle they'd be chiming anyway.
After a while, the exhaustion wore off enough for there to be fitful dreams and fragments of nightmares; he'd gotten to where he was steady on his feet, and was well enough to be complaining for a bath and starting to be awake more than he was asleep. Y'shtola took the nightmares as a good sign, on grounds of something about recovering enough for more normal function, and he found himself released from the infirmary and very suddenly dealing with a lot of getting passed from office to office making arrangements for a permanent room.
The whole thing was overloading, and half of what he'd said about preferences was not exactly serious; he made a mental note to not make that mistake again when he found himself with the keys to an apartment with a couple of rooms, a kitchen, and more space than he knew what to do with, on a higher floor of one of the towers with a view of the college's clock tower and a balcony. Someone had thought to leave some kind of contingent message so that while he was sitting in the main room, still trying to catch up to what was happening, he got a knock from someone dropping off a luggage-trunk with basic clothes.
He maneuvered that into the bedroom, putting them away in drawers and moving the trunk out of the way, and paused to spend a few minutes at the foot of the bed; he was fairly sure it was a middling, normal size, but it somehow managed to be the latest in a list of things where “bed” was not entirely meshing with the concept of “his” any better than the chest of drawers and wardrobe were faring in their struggle to compute as “his”.
He made a few circles of the apartment, dazedly poking the disjoint with a mental stick, and then just gave up, locking the door behind him to find food; he was just going to go someplace familiar and hope that being on Louisoix's tab was still the assumption, because he wasn't sure he could handle asking about his new monetary situation and what he counted as to the college now.
Somehow all he could think of was a fish stew; more flavor than what he'd been getting in the infirmary, but half picked because it ended up being the first thing he thought of when he tried to order. Afterwards, with the sun still up, he found a spot in the central plaza around the Aetheryte, and sat on a stone fence watching the snow fall, trying to figure out how he felt about this being “where he lived” now. It was probably a little cold to be out like that in little more than the worn tunic and overshirt he'd been handed when he was deemed able to leave the infirmary, but he was somehow intimidated by the idea of going back up to the room to look for something heavier.
“Thancred!”
His head shot up and around at Edine's voice, and he slid off the fence; she found him through the wandering student traffic just before he spotted her, dropping whatever she'd been carrying over the wall and pulling him into a hug, face buried in his shoulder.
It was like a much-needed grounding point; he pulled her closer, relaxing.
She stayed there for a couple minutes, then stepped back, hand brushing past his arm as she moved. “We heard about some of what happened from the Inspector's men – he had two of them staying with us until just yesterday, to be sure. Mother says she told you not to try to go after it alone.”
“I didn't actually mean to confront it alone, I'd just gotten separated in an ambush and tore off after something running away in the hopes it'd help find what they had hidden...turns out it was running back to its master.” He punctuated some of it with hand gestures, suddenly glad she'd come and not her mother.
“She also said that if you're looking for material for new songs, there's better ways to do it than almost getting killed.” She was enjoying relaying the chiding far too much, although he could almost feel her mother's dry glare in the words. “So...” She shifted, glancing away. “What are you going to do now?”
Ives and half the people he knew were gone, and everything had been turned upside down – and she probably hadn't heard about him getting claimed. “I'm going with Louisoix; he's been gathering a few people, and said they could use someone who can do that kind of information gathering.”
“Then you really are working with the Allseer now?” Her voice had a note of surprised awe; apparently she had heard, but it'd been garbled in with gossip and rumors.
“Yeah. Well, I have been since he, ah, got me out of prison.”
She was gathering up the white fabric she'd draped over the wall, and he caught sight of a Sharlayan crest embroidered on the collar. “Got you out of prison?” She was almost laughing, and they both knew her mother would be getting that 'sometimes I almost want to strangle you' expression.
“Well, you see, I was trying to learn what I could about the Ascians...but there wasn't anything in books I could get to, just references to books kept in the restricted, secure room of the college library... so I … ah … Borrowed them.” He rubbed the back of his head, doubly glad he was talking to Edine away from the house.
She broke into exasperated laughter before tugging it under control. “You broke into the secure room of the library – Gods, Thancred, you would've been dead if he hadn't grabbed you!”
It really was one of those things that was funny in retrospect but... yeah, given the climate and what they thought he was doing, that probably would've been an execution. “Well, getting arrested turned out to be the best horrible thing that ever happened to me.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “We did hear you were going to be staying on at the college... We wanted to give you this.” She held up a white coat, thick-lined for the winter; the collar had the stylized eye crest of the city and the colleges on either side, neatly embroidered in dark red-brown thread, with similar trim and polished silver buttons.
“I ...I'm not sure what to say – thank you.”
She held it up to him; he slid it on over his shoulders, trying to shift it into place on finding it was a couple sizes too big. Edine reached up to adjust the collar and straighten it. “You'll grow into it.” She tapped his chin while he was staring at the embroidery on the wrist-cuffs. “And you almost look respectable.”
He gave a glance around that the student traffic wasn't all caught up in their own affairs, and leaned over to kiss her.
She leaned into it.
“AWWWWWWW!!”
Thancred stiffened, whipping around in indignation. “YDA!”
The woman was practically bounding over; Papalymo behind her tried to catch the back of her coat, but was having about as much success at impeding her as would be expected of a Lalafell.
“Is this why you didn't have many stories about the weaver's daughter?” Yda had, at least, stopped at a vaguely respectful distance, bouncing on the balls of her feet with a wide, lopsided grin. “You little rake!”
Papalymo just buried his face in his hands, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.
Edine was laughing, at least, even if she sounded lost and was edging around behind him self-consciously.
“Edine, this is Yda and Papalymo; they're two of Louisoix's people.”
“It's an honor to meet you.” Edine bowed, or half-did from around his arm.
“Hi!”, Yda cut Papalymo off with a bright wave. “It's so good to see things looking up again!”
“Yda is stalling; there's a meeting we're supposed to be at before the next bell.” Papalymo shot a glare up at her.
“Oh, we can afford to stop and say hi, mister grumpypants.”
“Yda saved my life a couple days ago, and they both helped save me in the catacombs.”
Some of the overactive bouncing stopped. “He'd be good at giving me gray hairs if my hair weren't already white.”
Things he wouldn't have known if she hadn't said anything, the way she kept her head wrapped. Edine seemed to notice the sudden drop in exuberance, but stopped in the middle of looking to him, opting for a polite smile instead. “Thank you – he's good at getting into things, but not always good at getting out of them.”
“To be fair to him, this entire affair would've been beyond almost anyone's reach, and definitely if they were alone; I'm amazed we got through ourselves mostly unscathed.” Papalymo reached up to tug the side of Yda's coat. “We really should be going, unfortunately; have a good evening.” He bowed, and this time when he tugged and turned, Yda followed, turning with a tiny wave as she left.
“Thancred? What happened? We did hear about Gib, but...”
The nice wave of warmth decided to crash; he leaned on the stone fence, looking down. “It... It was Ives. Ascians possess people, they – trick victims into letting them in, and – it'd managed to use Ives. It's why Mattye hadn't fought back... if he had, he would've been hurting Ives.”
Edine's hand went to her mouth; she reached over for his free hand, lacing fingers into it and giving it a squeeze. “Gods... Is he-?”
Thancred shook his head. “It – there isn't a way, to save an Ascian's host; it – used him because it could get some of the other poor folk listening to it that way, and – it wanted me to go with it; when I wouldn't agree, it – tried to kill me.” He took a breath in, and let it out slowly. “The others caught up... Yda didn't know until afterwards that – it was the friend I'd told them about, that I'd been worrying about.”
She looked like she might've said something; instead, she tugged a little closer, putting an arm around him and leaning into him. He slipped his other arm off the fence to rest around her; as much as he'd been in and out, and she'd gone out to the plazas he'd play in, it was hard for her to've not known Ives, even if he took to her and moreso her mother like a skittish stray cat, never really wanting to go too close.
They stayed there until the clock bells sounded; she tugged back reluctantly, keeping his hand at first. “I should get home before dark... Mother asked me to let you know that she wanted to see you well, herself, if you were able.”
“I'll try – sometime in the next few days.” He squeezed her hand before letting go.
“Thancred – take care.”
“You as well.”
After she'd gone, he had a few more surreal moments, running fingers over the embroidery on the coat; it was like it was all finally settling back in as real. Ives was gone, Mattye was gone, everything'd gone upside down, and he'd signed on with Louisoix to fend off some kind of horrible possible future.
The idea of being an Archon was one that still felt ill-fitting and unreal, even if the Ascian had believed it enough to be trying to target him before anyone else could get to him; even with Louisoix's fishing, he didn't feel like something that could be a mythic hero. He knew a few stories and songs that started with the young and unfortunate, but the idea of one of the twelve incarnating as an abandoned bastard-child and a street performer of ill repute felt more like a strange joke.
He probably should try to get used to the apartment; he started to head back that way, but stopped on spotting a tired looking Y'shtola, heading over to her. One of her ears turned at his approach before she did, and she raised a hand weakly in greeting.
“Are you alright? You look about worn through.”
“You saw what came in from the skirmishes with the remainder of the cult; we have the emergency cases stabilized, and a few of the lesser injuries up and about.” And even with more than one conjurer on rotation, she was still taking on a lot of work. “We tried to leave things so that you could get your life together even if we were dealing with a veritable carnival of confusion and politics; our confirmation of an Ascian and a nascent void-gate has a number of people in a tizzy. It should die down in a few days once they're satisfied that everything possible was, in fact, done, and that there are adequate precautions taken.” She inclined her head, looking him over. “I don't recall that among what the tailor said they'd scrounged.”
“Edine stopped by; it's a gift.”
Y'shtola smiled quietly, eyes half-closed. “Did you manage to get a place to stay?”
“They asked me what I wanted; I told them I'd like something high up and that I was used to living in a clock. I'm a little higher than the clock-tower and maybe ten yalms from the top of its face, with a choice between a lift and a half-bell's worth of stairs.”
She just laughed, patting his shoulder. “They don't ask things idly; I'll let the others know when I see them, if they don't manage to find you themselves.”
“Thank you – I was heading there to adjust; you look like you should be asleep.”
She half-nodded, and he wasn't sure she wouldn't fall asleep on him there. “Have a good evening, then.” She tipped her head in a brief gesture towards a bow, and half-wobbled off; he almost went to make sure she made it, but he saw another of the students with a conjurer's wand look up from a book, dismayed, and hurry over to help.
It didn't look like she was accepting it easily, but the boy didn't look like he was giving up, either; Thancred left the student to it, taking the lift up.
He woke the next morning early from more scattered nightmares; gutted children, voidal monsters shaking themselves out of people's skin, Ives with a hand over his mouth and a knife in his back, an Ascian in full mask and robe kneeling and motioning to him in the alley his mother had left him in. He had a few grumbles about Y'shtola's “recovered enough to dream is a good thing”, and channeled the grumping into figuring out the fixtures, which led to spending a few minutes distracted by an apparatus attached to one of the pipes, a small tank with faint nubs around the top from the ends of bright, clear red fire crystals that were a part of the interior. He finally just chalked it up to Louisoix's not-joke about “if they haven't decided to re-invent the plumbing again”, and thankfulness for having a hot bath with more time than the rush there'd been at the one in the infirmary.
At some point while he'd been negotiating for the key, someone had thought to leave bread and cheese in the cabinet; he was going to need to get a little more to keep there, it was a better option than haunting the cafes, stands, and restaurants around the district.
He was living in a place where he could actually keep enough food to not have to worry about it; it was a very odd new thing, and he caught himself almost thinking it was early enough to expect Ives around.
That was enough prompting to throw on a coat and head out, whether it was to find something he was needed for or just to work on getting his bearings around the campus better.
He was halfway across the main hall of the ground floor when Louisoix and the Inspector came in the door; the conversation looked like it was wasn't going to be one he'd enjoy, even if the Inspector was looking tired, barely together, and not like he was looking for a fight. Abylghota was hovering just behind them, with most of her attention flickering on her partner as if she expected him to fall over at any second.
“Ah, Thancred, there you are.”
He nodded to Louisoix. The Inspector definitely looked the worse for wear; the blackened burns he'd seen the man brought in with were reduced to smooth scars with little snags here and there, still angry red down his face, and he had a heavier glove on one hand than the other. “Inspector.” He gave the man a separate nod of greeting. “Are you well?”
“Recovering; I think I've met half the people with a talent for conjury in the city over the last few days.” The thaumaturge shifted, tugging at his collar on the burned side. “I was caught off guard, didn't have a chance to put up a proper manawall to absorb it.”
“We wanted to see if you were feeling well enough to help; he's fairly sure you know some of them. They're trying to piece together how it came to such power there, and some of them might talk to you where they wouldn't to him or his men.”
He reached up to run a hand along the crest on the collar of the coat. “I can try... I – might want to leave this with you when we get to where they can see me – and I still can't make any guarantees. It's one thing if someone manages to get a lucky break and make a better living, like Gib, but there isn't much love for folk that turn sides to the law, and that's how they'll see me being allowed free access on this side of the bars.”
“Well, Hell, even if they slip something yelling at you, it'll be more than we've gotten.”
Thancred glanced from the inspector to Abylghota with a questioning eyebrow; the man didn't look like he should've been out of the infirmary, and he wasn't sure Y'shtola knew he was up. The Roegadyn's expression flattened with an eyeroll.
So he probably wasn't supposed to be up, and anything to get him feeling less like he had Pressing Work To Do was good.
“I'll do my best.”
They led him out of the college district; the route nagged him as familiar, but it wasn't until the bailey keep of the prison loomed in front of them that he remembered it as the way to where Louisoix had found him. He handed the coat to Louisoix just inside the door, and almost regretted passing off the added sense of security when they got to the way down to the higher-security cells.
The Inspector, Abylghota, and Louisoix stayed in the guardhouse on the way into the underground wing; the wall into the wing was all warded bars, giving a clear view and ability to hear everything.
The guard on duty held the door open for him; Louisoix caught his shoulder briefly has he passed by, giving him a nod.
About half of them were familiar, mostly in passing; he knew from experience that the build of the walls made it impossible to see down the hallway, but it was easy to read the shaded glares he was getting. It was the most heavily warded cell at the end that he stopped at, heart in his throat.
“Ayla?”
The Elezen girl stirred from a doze, staring at him in blank disbelief at first. “Thancred?”
“Why are you in the heavy wards?” His mouth had moved ahead of him thinking, and the first thing that got out it was dumb.
“Because Has-the Paragon taught me magic, so they're afraid of me.” She shifted how she was sitting to better face the bars at the front of the cell, arms folded and back to the wall.
“You know its name?” Dumb was still overriding thought.
“I was learning from it.” It was a weirdly familiar look in all the wrong contexts, the long-suffering patient one that went with waiting for him to catch up to what was going on.
“But – why? It was killing us, why were you working with it?”
She shifted, looking away and edging back into the corner. “Because the world's broken, Thancred. It's rotting, you can see it where we live, and they want to restore it – but to do it, all the rot needs to be cut away, or whatever comes after will just get the same sickness. Ives was working with it, too; we were going to help remake the world into something better.”
Ayla always had been more abstract than either of them, but this was running a little too far with that. “...So you were – okay with the sacrifices?”
“...There wasn't really any other way, and it didn't change much; if we didn't kill them, they would've died soon.”
“...How can you be so sure of that?” A little nagging thought wormed in that he was supposed to be trying to find out how it'd gotten power, but it was only just catching up past the dumb, and the part where this was one of his closer childhood friends.
“...I don't think I can tell you that.” She fixed him with a steady look, not budging on that challenge.
It'd come in working with Ives, and that would've been more than enough for it to've gotten Ayla. “How did you get everyone agreeing to this so fast?” He gestured down the hall; the parts he recognized were others that were younger, pickpockets and homeless people that scraped out on odd jobs and cheap work.
“You know how everyone starts filtering together for winter; there's not enough warm places and good shelter to not all start ending up in the same place. The first hideout was warded, and it was protecting us; nobody had to worry about the smugglers or the guard.” It was almost a depressing meditation on desperation. “Some people argued, but they either settled down when they realized it was safer, or they tried to go to the guard and didn't make it very far, but that just went towards other things to guard us. Even when the guard got too close, it warned us fast enough that we could find another place to hide without anyone getting caught.”
Simple safety; so many of them were so proud and vehement about selling out to the guard or the smugglers, then they sold out to an Ascian for a warm room and something to guard it. The “safe house” she'd been trying to invite him to wasn't safe because the killers couldn't get to it, it was safe because they were the ones keeping it, and if the Ascian had wanted him, then...
He was suddenly very glad he'd been so single minded that he hadn't even really paid attention when she told him about it.
“Thancred? What are you doing here?” There had been bits of the shaded, suspicious look the whole time, threaded in and out of her tired, matter-of-fact commentary; now it was more prevalent.
“I – did what I said I'd be doing; I was tracking it down to stop it, so there wouldn't be any more murders.”
“....You're the one who led them to us?” It wasn't sharp enough, there was too much of a wobble of hurt under it.
“I couldn't let that go on; it wasn't any better than the smugglers – it was using you, and killing friends of ours.”
“Thancred... did you find them? Did you lead them to – do you know where Ives is?” Her voice was wavering.
“I – Ives is gone, it tried to kill me....”
She curled in the back of the cell, staring at him in wounded disbelief. “You killed him... You led them to all of us, helped them throw us in here, and you killed him?!”
He took a half-step back, mouth working with nothing coming out; she was moving to stand. He didn't even realize Louisoix wasn't in the guardhouse anymore until he was being pulled away by the sleeve; she came to the bars, too hesitant to touch them, calling after. “You - coward! You betrayed all of us, he took care of you and you killed him!”
Louisoix kept going until they'd gone out the heavy door on the other side of the guardhouse, up the stairs to the next floor; the Inspector and Abylghota followed behind them. Louisoix stopped in the stone hallway, draping the white coat over his shoulders.
“Well... that was depressing, but more than we'd had.” The inspector was still looking grimly off down the stairs.
“...She's not – she used to take care of the smaller kids, I'm not sure what happened, that's – not like her –”
Abylghota shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Er. I ...uh...hate to break it to you, but... she also always had a rivet or two missing from the beams under the waterline, and if she was, uh, involved with Ives and he was working with it... then it's … not that weird for her to've stuck with the guy she was sleeping with even if he was doing something dumb. And horrifying.”
“She told me they had a safehouse – she was close with some of the people it killed, used to call one of them her sister, she said she wanted to protect them...”
“Well, apparently she had a different definition of 'protect' than you do.” The Inspector sounded too tired for there to be as much acid in that as there should've been.
“It's not that hard for someone who is afraid and desperate to think that maybe a horror is 'worth' what they believe they're buying for it.” Louisoix worried at the collar of his coat until it was laying right.
“...She could've stopped it... could've gotten people away from it...”
“Could've, didn't.” The Inspector's voice was sharp.
“...What's going to happen to her?”
“She killed three of my men, admitted to involvement in the sacrifices and the voidgate, left several others badly injured, and I got caught off guard because normally, people don't learn thaumaturgy like that in four months.”
His voice choked for a moment, and Louisoix looked away.
“I – if she had time, and we could snap her out of it, she could-”
“No.” The Inspector took a step forward, catching the collar of his shirt with a brief glance to Louisoix, stopping there. “Enough with the 'could'; she already 'could've' and she didn't, just like Ives 'could've' at least fought the damn thing and not helped it get a foothold and didn't; 'could' doesn't matter worth a pint of piss at a time like this, and if you keep trying to believe that 'could' is what someone will do, you are going to get used so someone else can get away with whatever they damn well pleased, and it'll be you that 'could've' done something to stop it.” He had a strange feeling there would've been more force behind it as it trailed off if the Inspector hadn't been injured and trying to mind Louisoix, but there was every harsh edge the man could've mustered, and the exhaustion didn't take any edges off his glare.
“I … I thought I knew them...”
The Inspector bristled, and Abylghota caught his shoulder. “Fifteen summers. He's half still a kid; how would you've taken this when you were his age?”
There was a faint grumble that didn't form into words, and the Inspector dropped his collar, stepping back. “You're lucky you have people to look out for you until you catch on.”
Abylghota tugged on the man's coat on the shoulder, herding him out with an apologetic look back at Thancred and Louisoix.
He slumped against Louisoix, not quite feeling up to standing; Louisoix put an arm over his shoulder for support. “For all that he's harsh, and oft too suspicious...you can't make someone's choices for them. They'll decide what they want to believe and what they'll do, no matter how much you might wish they'd choose what good you know they'd be capable of.”
He nodded into Louisoix's coat.
“Let's get you back; I'll try to make sure there's a voice on the council that doesn't run too paranoid with this.”
Summary: Snowballed headcanon! NOW OFFICIALLY OVER FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS, SOB.
Chapter Summary: Thancred working on making sense of funny concepts like "I own furniture", fluffy fluff, and mood whiplash.
Warnings: Mild swearing, brainwashed crazy, pre-industrial age standards becoming obvious.
Urianger beat Louisoix in with a similar stack of books, and had apparently kept track of the journal from before; Louisoix was in and out, distracted and giving some apologies for dealing with “politics” and clearing up what'd happened to the councils, but his prediction turned out true – by evening, the clammy, sunken patch was gone, and there was a last incident of one of the trainees changing sheets and blankets.
None of the food was anything notable, but he went through more of it than he'd expected, and found himself passing out on the books more often than not; he wasn't sure, but he suspected that Louisoix had done some of the healing while he was asleep.
He had a very surreal drowsy moment when the door opened to Inspector Rigaud; the Elezen looked a little ragged, but apparently hadn't been one of the severe injuries, and was stiff and uncomfortable as he stood in the door. Everything was catching up enough that Thancred couldn't bring himself to have the energy to do more than give the door a bleary, tired look.
“I have heard how the forward mission went; you've adequately acquitted yourself.”
The Inspector left almost as fast as he'd come, and Thancred took quiet, smug pride in the amount of discomfort the man had at what passed for an admission that he wasn't an enemy and had actually proven it.
Y'shtola had a foray through checking on him; she seemed content with his condition, but drew the curtains to the point it was hard to tell there was anything outside, and arranged for a small side lamp that he could use to read by. It took him a few bits of sleeping, waking up, eating, and reading until he fell asleep again to realize that it made it incredibly hard to keep track of time, and he had a suspicion that might've been the point; it was dumb luck if he was awake when the bells chimed the hours, and at that point, he'd completely lost track of which cycle they'd be chiming anyway.
After a while, the exhaustion wore off enough for there to be fitful dreams and fragments of nightmares; he'd gotten to where he was steady on his feet, and was well enough to be complaining for a bath and starting to be awake more than he was asleep. Y'shtola took the nightmares as a good sign, on grounds of something about recovering enough for more normal function, and he found himself released from the infirmary and very suddenly dealing with a lot of getting passed from office to office making arrangements for a permanent room.
The whole thing was overloading, and half of what he'd said about preferences was not exactly serious; he made a mental note to not make that mistake again when he found himself with the keys to an apartment with a couple of rooms, a kitchen, and more space than he knew what to do with, on a higher floor of one of the towers with a view of the college's clock tower and a balcony. Someone had thought to leave some kind of contingent message so that while he was sitting in the main room, still trying to catch up to what was happening, he got a knock from someone dropping off a luggage-trunk with basic clothes.
He maneuvered that into the bedroom, putting them away in drawers and moving the trunk out of the way, and paused to spend a few minutes at the foot of the bed; he was fairly sure it was a middling, normal size, but it somehow managed to be the latest in a list of things where “bed” was not entirely meshing with the concept of “his” any better than the chest of drawers and wardrobe were faring in their struggle to compute as “his”.
He made a few circles of the apartment, dazedly poking the disjoint with a mental stick, and then just gave up, locking the door behind him to find food; he was just going to go someplace familiar and hope that being on Louisoix's tab was still the assumption, because he wasn't sure he could handle asking about his new monetary situation and what he counted as to the college now.
Somehow all he could think of was a fish stew; more flavor than what he'd been getting in the infirmary, but half picked because it ended up being the first thing he thought of when he tried to order. Afterwards, with the sun still up, he found a spot in the central plaza around the Aetheryte, and sat on a stone fence watching the snow fall, trying to figure out how he felt about this being “where he lived” now. It was probably a little cold to be out like that in little more than the worn tunic and overshirt he'd been handed when he was deemed able to leave the infirmary, but he was somehow intimidated by the idea of going back up to the room to look for something heavier.
“Thancred!”
His head shot up and around at Edine's voice, and he slid off the fence; she found him through the wandering student traffic just before he spotted her, dropping whatever she'd been carrying over the wall and pulling him into a hug, face buried in his shoulder.
It was like a much-needed grounding point; he pulled her closer, relaxing.
She stayed there for a couple minutes, then stepped back, hand brushing past his arm as she moved. “We heard about some of what happened from the Inspector's men – he had two of them staying with us until just yesterday, to be sure. Mother says she told you not to try to go after it alone.”
“I didn't actually mean to confront it alone, I'd just gotten separated in an ambush and tore off after something running away in the hopes it'd help find what they had hidden...turns out it was running back to its master.” He punctuated some of it with hand gestures, suddenly glad she'd come and not her mother.
“She also said that if you're looking for material for new songs, there's better ways to do it than almost getting killed.” She was enjoying relaying the chiding far too much, although he could almost feel her mother's dry glare in the words. “So...” She shifted, glancing away. “What are you going to do now?”
Ives and half the people he knew were gone, and everything had been turned upside down – and she probably hadn't heard about him getting claimed. “I'm going with Louisoix; he's been gathering a few people, and said they could use someone who can do that kind of information gathering.”
“Then you really are working with the Allseer now?” Her voice had a note of surprised awe; apparently she had heard, but it'd been garbled in with gossip and rumors.
“Yeah. Well, I have been since he, ah, got me out of prison.”
She was gathering up the white fabric she'd draped over the wall, and he caught sight of a Sharlayan crest embroidered on the collar. “Got you out of prison?” She was almost laughing, and they both knew her mother would be getting that 'sometimes I almost want to strangle you' expression.
“Well, you see, I was trying to learn what I could about the Ascians...but there wasn't anything in books I could get to, just references to books kept in the restricted, secure room of the college library... so I … ah … Borrowed them.” He rubbed the back of his head, doubly glad he was talking to Edine away from the house.
She broke into exasperated laughter before tugging it under control. “You broke into the secure room of the library – Gods, Thancred, you would've been dead if he hadn't grabbed you!”
It really was one of those things that was funny in retrospect but... yeah, given the climate and what they thought he was doing, that probably would've been an execution. “Well, getting arrested turned out to be the best horrible thing that ever happened to me.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “We did hear you were going to be staying on at the college... We wanted to give you this.” She held up a white coat, thick-lined for the winter; the collar had the stylized eye crest of the city and the colleges on either side, neatly embroidered in dark red-brown thread, with similar trim and polished silver buttons.
“I ...I'm not sure what to say – thank you.”
She held it up to him; he slid it on over his shoulders, trying to shift it into place on finding it was a couple sizes too big. Edine reached up to adjust the collar and straighten it. “You'll grow into it.” She tapped his chin while he was staring at the embroidery on the wrist-cuffs. “And you almost look respectable.”
He gave a glance around that the student traffic wasn't all caught up in their own affairs, and leaned over to kiss her.
She leaned into it.
“AWWWWWWW!!”
Thancred stiffened, whipping around in indignation. “YDA!”
The woman was practically bounding over; Papalymo behind her tried to catch the back of her coat, but was having about as much success at impeding her as would be expected of a Lalafell.
“Is this why you didn't have many stories about the weaver's daughter?” Yda had, at least, stopped at a vaguely respectful distance, bouncing on the balls of her feet with a wide, lopsided grin. “You little rake!”
Papalymo just buried his face in his hands, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.
Edine was laughing, at least, even if she sounded lost and was edging around behind him self-consciously.
“Edine, this is Yda and Papalymo; they're two of Louisoix's people.”
“It's an honor to meet you.” Edine bowed, or half-did from around his arm.
“Hi!”, Yda cut Papalymo off with a bright wave. “It's so good to see things looking up again!”
“Yda is stalling; there's a meeting we're supposed to be at before the next bell.” Papalymo shot a glare up at her.
“Oh, we can afford to stop and say hi, mister grumpypants.”
“Yda saved my life a couple days ago, and they both helped save me in the catacombs.”
Some of the overactive bouncing stopped. “He'd be good at giving me gray hairs if my hair weren't already white.”
Things he wouldn't have known if she hadn't said anything, the way she kept her head wrapped. Edine seemed to notice the sudden drop in exuberance, but stopped in the middle of looking to him, opting for a polite smile instead. “Thank you – he's good at getting into things, but not always good at getting out of them.”
“To be fair to him, this entire affair would've been beyond almost anyone's reach, and definitely if they were alone; I'm amazed we got through ourselves mostly unscathed.” Papalymo reached up to tug the side of Yda's coat. “We really should be going, unfortunately; have a good evening.” He bowed, and this time when he tugged and turned, Yda followed, turning with a tiny wave as she left.
“Thancred? What happened? We did hear about Gib, but...”
The nice wave of warmth decided to crash; he leaned on the stone fence, looking down. “It... It was Ives. Ascians possess people, they – trick victims into letting them in, and – it'd managed to use Ives. It's why Mattye hadn't fought back... if he had, he would've been hurting Ives.”
Edine's hand went to her mouth; she reached over for his free hand, lacing fingers into it and giving it a squeeze. “Gods... Is he-?”
Thancred shook his head. “It – there isn't a way, to save an Ascian's host; it – used him because it could get some of the other poor folk listening to it that way, and – it wanted me to go with it; when I wouldn't agree, it – tried to kill me.” He took a breath in, and let it out slowly. “The others caught up... Yda didn't know until afterwards that – it was the friend I'd told them about, that I'd been worrying about.”
She looked like she might've said something; instead, she tugged a little closer, putting an arm around him and leaning into him. He slipped his other arm off the fence to rest around her; as much as he'd been in and out, and she'd gone out to the plazas he'd play in, it was hard for her to've not known Ives, even if he took to her and moreso her mother like a skittish stray cat, never really wanting to go too close.
They stayed there until the clock bells sounded; she tugged back reluctantly, keeping his hand at first. “I should get home before dark... Mother asked me to let you know that she wanted to see you well, herself, if you were able.”
“I'll try – sometime in the next few days.” He squeezed her hand before letting go.
“Thancred – take care.”
“You as well.”
After she'd gone, he had a few more surreal moments, running fingers over the embroidery on the coat; it was like it was all finally settling back in as real. Ives was gone, Mattye was gone, everything'd gone upside down, and he'd signed on with Louisoix to fend off some kind of horrible possible future.
The idea of being an Archon was one that still felt ill-fitting and unreal, even if the Ascian had believed it enough to be trying to target him before anyone else could get to him; even with Louisoix's fishing, he didn't feel like something that could be a mythic hero. He knew a few stories and songs that started with the young and unfortunate, but the idea of one of the twelve incarnating as an abandoned bastard-child and a street performer of ill repute felt more like a strange joke.
He probably should try to get used to the apartment; he started to head back that way, but stopped on spotting a tired looking Y'shtola, heading over to her. One of her ears turned at his approach before she did, and she raised a hand weakly in greeting.
“Are you alright? You look about worn through.”
“You saw what came in from the skirmishes with the remainder of the cult; we have the emergency cases stabilized, and a few of the lesser injuries up and about.” And even with more than one conjurer on rotation, she was still taking on a lot of work. “We tried to leave things so that you could get your life together even if we were dealing with a veritable carnival of confusion and politics; our confirmation of an Ascian and a nascent void-gate has a number of people in a tizzy. It should die down in a few days once they're satisfied that everything possible was, in fact, done, and that there are adequate precautions taken.” She inclined her head, looking him over. “I don't recall that among what the tailor said they'd scrounged.”
“Edine stopped by; it's a gift.”
Y'shtola smiled quietly, eyes half-closed. “Did you manage to get a place to stay?”
“They asked me what I wanted; I told them I'd like something high up and that I was used to living in a clock. I'm a little higher than the clock-tower and maybe ten yalms from the top of its face, with a choice between a lift and a half-bell's worth of stairs.”
She just laughed, patting his shoulder. “They don't ask things idly; I'll let the others know when I see them, if they don't manage to find you themselves.”
“Thank you – I was heading there to adjust; you look like you should be asleep.”
She half-nodded, and he wasn't sure she wouldn't fall asleep on him there. “Have a good evening, then.” She tipped her head in a brief gesture towards a bow, and half-wobbled off; he almost went to make sure she made it, but he saw another of the students with a conjurer's wand look up from a book, dismayed, and hurry over to help.
It didn't look like she was accepting it easily, but the boy didn't look like he was giving up, either; Thancred left the student to it, taking the lift up.
He woke the next morning early from more scattered nightmares; gutted children, voidal monsters shaking themselves out of people's skin, Ives with a hand over his mouth and a knife in his back, an Ascian in full mask and robe kneeling and motioning to him in the alley his mother had left him in. He had a few grumbles about Y'shtola's “recovered enough to dream is a good thing”, and channeled the grumping into figuring out the fixtures, which led to spending a few minutes distracted by an apparatus attached to one of the pipes, a small tank with faint nubs around the top from the ends of bright, clear red fire crystals that were a part of the interior. He finally just chalked it up to Louisoix's not-joke about “if they haven't decided to re-invent the plumbing again”, and thankfulness for having a hot bath with more time than the rush there'd been at the one in the infirmary.
At some point while he'd been negotiating for the key, someone had thought to leave bread and cheese in the cabinet; he was going to need to get a little more to keep there, it was a better option than haunting the cafes, stands, and restaurants around the district.
He was living in a place where he could actually keep enough food to not have to worry about it; it was a very odd new thing, and he caught himself almost thinking it was early enough to expect Ives around.
That was enough prompting to throw on a coat and head out, whether it was to find something he was needed for or just to work on getting his bearings around the campus better.
He was halfway across the main hall of the ground floor when Louisoix and the Inspector came in the door; the conversation looked like it was wasn't going to be one he'd enjoy, even if the Inspector was looking tired, barely together, and not like he was looking for a fight. Abylghota was hovering just behind them, with most of her attention flickering on her partner as if she expected him to fall over at any second.
“Ah, Thancred, there you are.”
He nodded to Louisoix. The Inspector definitely looked the worse for wear; the blackened burns he'd seen the man brought in with were reduced to smooth scars with little snags here and there, still angry red down his face, and he had a heavier glove on one hand than the other. “Inspector.” He gave the man a separate nod of greeting. “Are you well?”
“Recovering; I think I've met half the people with a talent for conjury in the city over the last few days.” The thaumaturge shifted, tugging at his collar on the burned side. “I was caught off guard, didn't have a chance to put up a proper manawall to absorb it.”
“We wanted to see if you were feeling well enough to help; he's fairly sure you know some of them. They're trying to piece together how it came to such power there, and some of them might talk to you where they wouldn't to him or his men.”
He reached up to run a hand along the crest on the collar of the coat. “I can try... I – might want to leave this with you when we get to where they can see me – and I still can't make any guarantees. It's one thing if someone manages to get a lucky break and make a better living, like Gib, but there isn't much love for folk that turn sides to the law, and that's how they'll see me being allowed free access on this side of the bars.”
“Well, Hell, even if they slip something yelling at you, it'll be more than we've gotten.”
Thancred glanced from the inspector to Abylghota with a questioning eyebrow; the man didn't look like he should've been out of the infirmary, and he wasn't sure Y'shtola knew he was up. The Roegadyn's expression flattened with an eyeroll.
So he probably wasn't supposed to be up, and anything to get him feeling less like he had Pressing Work To Do was good.
“I'll do my best.”
They led him out of the college district; the route nagged him as familiar, but it wasn't until the bailey keep of the prison loomed in front of them that he remembered it as the way to where Louisoix had found him. He handed the coat to Louisoix just inside the door, and almost regretted passing off the added sense of security when they got to the way down to the higher-security cells.
The Inspector, Abylghota, and Louisoix stayed in the guardhouse on the way into the underground wing; the wall into the wing was all warded bars, giving a clear view and ability to hear everything.
The guard on duty held the door open for him; Louisoix caught his shoulder briefly has he passed by, giving him a nod.
About half of them were familiar, mostly in passing; he knew from experience that the build of the walls made it impossible to see down the hallway, but it was easy to read the shaded glares he was getting. It was the most heavily warded cell at the end that he stopped at, heart in his throat.
“Ayla?”
The Elezen girl stirred from a doze, staring at him in blank disbelief at first. “Thancred?”
“Why are you in the heavy wards?” His mouth had moved ahead of him thinking, and the first thing that got out it was dumb.
“Because Has-the Paragon taught me magic, so they're afraid of me.” She shifted how she was sitting to better face the bars at the front of the cell, arms folded and back to the wall.
“You know its name?” Dumb was still overriding thought.
“I was learning from it.” It was a weirdly familiar look in all the wrong contexts, the long-suffering patient one that went with waiting for him to catch up to what was going on.
“But – why? It was killing us, why were you working with it?”
She shifted, looking away and edging back into the corner. “Because the world's broken, Thancred. It's rotting, you can see it where we live, and they want to restore it – but to do it, all the rot needs to be cut away, or whatever comes after will just get the same sickness. Ives was working with it, too; we were going to help remake the world into something better.”
Ayla always had been more abstract than either of them, but this was running a little too far with that. “...So you were – okay with the sacrifices?”
“...There wasn't really any other way, and it didn't change much; if we didn't kill them, they would've died soon.”
“...How can you be so sure of that?” A little nagging thought wormed in that he was supposed to be trying to find out how it'd gotten power, but it was only just catching up past the dumb, and the part where this was one of his closer childhood friends.
“...I don't think I can tell you that.” She fixed him with a steady look, not budging on that challenge.
It'd come in working with Ives, and that would've been more than enough for it to've gotten Ayla. “How did you get everyone agreeing to this so fast?” He gestured down the hall; the parts he recognized were others that were younger, pickpockets and homeless people that scraped out on odd jobs and cheap work.
“You know how everyone starts filtering together for winter; there's not enough warm places and good shelter to not all start ending up in the same place. The first hideout was warded, and it was protecting us; nobody had to worry about the smugglers or the guard.” It was almost a depressing meditation on desperation. “Some people argued, but they either settled down when they realized it was safer, or they tried to go to the guard and didn't make it very far, but that just went towards other things to guard us. Even when the guard got too close, it warned us fast enough that we could find another place to hide without anyone getting caught.”
Simple safety; so many of them were so proud and vehement about selling out to the guard or the smugglers, then they sold out to an Ascian for a warm room and something to guard it. The “safe house” she'd been trying to invite him to wasn't safe because the killers couldn't get to it, it was safe because they were the ones keeping it, and if the Ascian had wanted him, then...
He was suddenly very glad he'd been so single minded that he hadn't even really paid attention when she told him about it.
“Thancred? What are you doing here?” There had been bits of the shaded, suspicious look the whole time, threaded in and out of her tired, matter-of-fact commentary; now it was more prevalent.
“I – did what I said I'd be doing; I was tracking it down to stop it, so there wouldn't be any more murders.”
“....You're the one who led them to us?” It wasn't sharp enough, there was too much of a wobble of hurt under it.
“I couldn't let that go on; it wasn't any better than the smugglers – it was using you, and killing friends of ours.”
“Thancred... did you find them? Did you lead them to – do you know where Ives is?” Her voice was wavering.
“I – Ives is gone, it tried to kill me....”
She curled in the back of the cell, staring at him in wounded disbelief. “You killed him... You led them to all of us, helped them throw us in here, and you killed him?!”
He took a half-step back, mouth working with nothing coming out; she was moving to stand. He didn't even realize Louisoix wasn't in the guardhouse anymore until he was being pulled away by the sleeve; she came to the bars, too hesitant to touch them, calling after. “You - coward! You betrayed all of us, he took care of you and you killed him!”
Louisoix kept going until they'd gone out the heavy door on the other side of the guardhouse, up the stairs to the next floor; the Inspector and Abylghota followed behind them. Louisoix stopped in the stone hallway, draping the white coat over his shoulders.
“Well... that was depressing, but more than we'd had.” The inspector was still looking grimly off down the stairs.
“...She's not – she used to take care of the smaller kids, I'm not sure what happened, that's – not like her –”
Abylghota shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Er. I ...uh...hate to break it to you, but... she also always had a rivet or two missing from the beams under the waterline, and if she was, uh, involved with Ives and he was working with it... then it's … not that weird for her to've stuck with the guy she was sleeping with even if he was doing something dumb. And horrifying.”
“She told me they had a safehouse – she was close with some of the people it killed, used to call one of them her sister, she said she wanted to protect them...”
“Well, apparently she had a different definition of 'protect' than you do.” The Inspector sounded too tired for there to be as much acid in that as there should've been.
“It's not that hard for someone who is afraid and desperate to think that maybe a horror is 'worth' what they believe they're buying for it.” Louisoix worried at the collar of his coat until it was laying right.
“...She could've stopped it... could've gotten people away from it...”
“Could've, didn't.” The Inspector's voice was sharp.
“...What's going to happen to her?”
“She killed three of my men, admitted to involvement in the sacrifices and the voidgate, left several others badly injured, and I got caught off guard because normally, people don't learn thaumaturgy like that in four months.”
His voice choked for a moment, and Louisoix looked away.
“I – if she had time, and we could snap her out of it, she could-”
“No.” The Inspector took a step forward, catching the collar of his shirt with a brief glance to Louisoix, stopping there. “Enough with the 'could'; she already 'could've' and she didn't, just like Ives 'could've' at least fought the damn thing and not helped it get a foothold and didn't; 'could' doesn't matter worth a pint of piss at a time like this, and if you keep trying to believe that 'could' is what someone will do, you are going to get used so someone else can get away with whatever they damn well pleased, and it'll be you that 'could've' done something to stop it.” He had a strange feeling there would've been more force behind it as it trailed off if the Inspector hadn't been injured and trying to mind Louisoix, but there was every harsh edge the man could've mustered, and the exhaustion didn't take any edges off his glare.
“I … I thought I knew them...”
The Inspector bristled, and Abylghota caught his shoulder. “Fifteen summers. He's half still a kid; how would you've taken this when you were his age?”
There was a faint grumble that didn't form into words, and the Inspector dropped his collar, stepping back. “You're lucky you have people to look out for you until you catch on.”
Abylghota tugged on the man's coat on the shoulder, herding him out with an apologetic look back at Thancred and Louisoix.
He slumped against Louisoix, not quite feeling up to standing; Louisoix put an arm over his shoulder for support. “For all that he's harsh, and oft too suspicious...you can't make someone's choices for them. They'll decide what they want to believe and what they'll do, no matter how much you might wish they'd choose what good you know they'd be capable of.”
He nodded into Louisoix's coat.
“Let's get you back; I'll try to make sure there's a voice on the council that doesn't run too paranoid with this.”
