wrecking_yard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wrecking_yard) wrote2014-03-22 10:27 pm
wrecking_yard) wrote2014-03-22 10:27 pm
Accidental Nano - Ch. 5
Fandom: FFXIV
Summary: Snowballed headcanon!
Chapter Summary: Thancred getshis life savedadopted by Louisoix, and does not realize that it is a long-term arrangement, despite a driveby Yda. Also has an opportunity to actually process what's going on for the first time since everything went pear-shaped.
Warnings: Getting hit over the head with "YOU CAN MOURN ALREADY STUPID". Yda. Some swearing that might be recognizable here as such?
He woke up in a cell, with shackles around his wrists and ankles, chains connecting the wrist pieces together and the ankle bracers to each other, enough that it would be hard to walk. The window was barely a head's width, eight feet up in the wall, and was more heavy metal grid than anything; there was metal inlay in the walls that probably amounted to some kind of magic suppression, and further inlay on the metal bars of the cell. Ground level must've been close to the tiny window judging by the dim lighting, the hallway lit by gaslights hanging from the grey stone, and there was one of the guard's mages with a rod handy, standing guard.
He had a warmer shirt and the pants he'd been in, but the outer coat and bag were gone, along with pretty much all of his few belongings, including the soulstone, which was the part that stung the worst. He had a few scrapes up one arm and the side of his face that must've been where he'd hit the ground, since the sleep spell had hit with him at the beginning of a dead run vaulting a fence; he must've been out for a few hours judging by the way some of the light bleeding had dried, and it looked like it'd been cleaned.
The mage had shifted a little more alert with him stirring and checking himself over, watching him warily.
“Isn't this a little excessive?” He tapped one of the sigils inlaid into the wall.
“With what you were trying to summon? No.”
Bored, cranky, and on edge.
“I wasn't trying to summon anything. I was trying to find a way to stop something all of you were ignoring.” Unfortunately, so was he – tired, snippy, and on about his last three nerves.
“We have been dead on our feet lately trying to catch a group of murderers – one of which you were helping.”
He stood up, wobbling a little and woozier than he'd realized – they must've been chain-casting to keep him out. “Now look here, you pompous stuffed up ass.” He probably should've thought before he put a hand on the bars to lean on them, but they weren't contact-trapped, probably just magic-suppressant. “I live down there, and I'm willing to bet that you liver-brained sons of puddings didn't think it was worth bothering until Mattye died,” There was some kind of chime echoing through the halls, and the mage glanced aside with a sudden look of faint panic, a hand raised for him to shush that only got the opposite effect; far from getting quieter, he raised his voice, hoping it carried. “And that was my mentor who taught me how to read, who got killed trying to stop that thing from killing people I grew up with, and I have been trying to tell all of you that there was a fucking godsbedamned ASCIAN pulling strings and trying to get you fighting everyone,”, the side door opened to the inspector, trying to shrink, holding the door for a taller, dark-skinned Elezen he didn't bother turning to get a good look at, “and all I ever got for coming forward was you assholes throwing accusations and trying to throw me and one of his other students in prison to rot while that monster flounced off to cause more trouble, and as far as I'm concerned, the lot of you can go and rot because I wouldn't be here if even one of you pulled your heads out of the rot-infested gut-holes you shoved them in to take three looks around and listen!” The mage was motioning a little more frantically for him to shut up; he did manage a side glance, to see the Inspector with his head buried in his hands, while the older Elezen man just had a bemused eyebrow raised; definitely neater-dressed, but he wasn't sure he recognized any of it, and the man's hand was resting loosely on a staff inscribed with Thaliak's symbol. “I bet you didn't even care to step up patrols until that stunt with the church because it was 'just' homeless brats and starving street trash before that, and every time it kills someone else, I want you to remember that I told you it was there when it first started!”
He hadn't really run out of breath, but keeping up that level of ranting while still shaking off a string of sleep spells had him feeling a little too light-headed to keep it up; he wobbled, leaning sullenly against the bars.
The older Elezen walked into the room, studying him with a considering look, and then looked between him, the mage-guard, and the Inspector. “How long ago was this report of an Ascian?”
“Over a moon”, he hissed through his teeth; he'd started to loose track of time with everything going on. The Inspector had his mouth open to answer, but ended up nodding faintly and gesturing.
“Why did I not hear of this?”
“Because he's a thief and an inveterate liar who's run scams in between more legal performances, and Mattye was killed with a blade; Ascians don't use mortal weapons, and the knife in question belonged to a close friend of his.” The answer was tired and matter-of-fact.
“Ascians are also loathe to move openly; they prefer trickery to cause chaos indirectly, and turning your guardsmen and the poor against each other would certainly manage that.” The man walked over, looking him over. “Might I ask your name?”
Well, he was less obnoxious than the inspectors. “Thancred.”
He nodded slowly, voice calm and fond. “Mattye has written five treatise on ancient Nymian culture, with you cited as a needed research assistant; he had been overjoyed to find someone that could access that stone. He was casting around to sponsor you into the college.”
The urge to keep sniping broke like a lanced wound; he slumped against the bars, a lump in his throat.
“Inspector? I understand that you had reasons to be cautious, and I do apologize for something we withheld from you. One of mine had a bad encounter with an Ascian in town not long enough ago, on the other side of the city; while we cleared out its beginnings of trouble, there was enough evidence to believe the creature itself would return. We did not want to play into its hands by starting a panic, but it was not unexpected that it would make another appearance.”
The Inspector glanced between him and the older man, nervous and uncomfortable. “Allseer?”
“Would you mind leaving us to collect his belongings? I will be taking him into my custody.”
“He's wanted as an accomplice to murder and worse-”
The older man straightened his shoulders and adjusted his hand on his staff.
“I'll go get them.”, the Inspector mumbled, ducking out of the room.
“Thancred.” he waited until Thancred looked up. “Do you think that you could help us find where it and its followers have gone to ground?”
“That's what I've been trying to do from the start.”, he answered weakly.
The Allseer turned to the guard, motioning at the door; he stepped back. The mage was still on edge, although he wasn't sure if the man was more nervous about him or the Elezen mage as he unlocked the door.
“There won't be any need for the shackles, either.”
The guard gave him an uncertain look, and unlocked them, hanging them over an arm as he stepped out of the way. Thancred rubbed his wrists, wincing a little at the scrapped spot.
There was a hand on his wrist, resting lightly, the warm glow of a small cure spell sinking in, the scrapes vanishing.
“The Inspector should have your things by the entrance, although it would be appreciated if you would surrender anything too recently stolen for return to its original owners; you won't be left to starve.”
He looked up from his wrist, mouth hanging open a little; this was about the last thing he'd expected from getting arrested, and he felt more raw and small than he had in weeks.
He followed mutely, not quite able to bring himself to pocket the soulstone instead of holding it close to his chest as he walked. It'd been such a stretch of having to fight and be on edge for almost everything, with so little time to rest, that he wasn't sure what to do with someone who wasn't arguing with him in a stuation where he wasn't under some direct potential threat just around the corner.
Now that someone actually was willing to listen, and he wasn't likely to need to run at the drop of a pin, he found himself just feeling tired, worn through, and lost. He didn't even realize they were back on the college's grounds until the Allseer had stopped in front of him in one of the squares.
“How long has it been since you've eaten?”
He actually had to think; he hadn't really been paying attention, between the dodging and burying his head in the one book he could translate. “I – think yesterday sometime?” Now that he'd looked up, he was suddenly very aware that they had attention, the normal traffic keeping a respectful distance but clearly taking notice. Between trying to avoid attention, the henna starting to wear out of his hair, and the last couple days, he probably looked a wreck, and some tired part of his mind that was still working was running over bits overheard and the realization that he'd just been rescued by one of the highest ranking people in the city, from the old country he'd heard stories of sometimes, and that it was pretty common to hear the words “prophet” and “Archon” associated with the man. Right now, the main thing that brought to mind was that it meant drawing a lot of attention and looking very out of place.
“Let's take care of that first, and get you a place to rest; you look like you've barely slept all week.” Which...was not wrong.
The Archon led off the square to a building off to the side, where there was an awning and a few tables outside still; he waited off to the side, distracted from whatever was being ordered by the smell of food and the continued awareness that yes, the Allseer coming in with a bedraggled mess was going to be all over campus by tomorrow, and probably half the town in a week.
He'd been expecting to be led to a table; instead, after a wait, the Elezen his new benefactor had been talking to emerged from the back with a cord-wrapped box.
This time the Allseer led halfway across the campus, into one of the larger buildings, through a raised hall between parts of the towers, and through enough turns of the building that he was too tired to keep track of, until he wasn't sure where they were anymore. There was another short pause where he ended up waiting in the hallway after a “one moment”, and then around a few more stairs and hallways with the Allseer carrying a key.
The room was basically a small flat, a bed in one corner, a desk, a chest of drawers, and a small table with a few chairs. He stood in the door blinking at it while the Archon set the box on the table and took a moment to light lamps and open curtains.
“You can sit.” The older man seemed quietly amused by the blank stare he was giving the room; he blinked again, nodded, and settled on the chair, tugging the cord holding the lid on the plain wooden box.
The box was filled with rice and bits of cooked fish, and the cook had apparently wedged a spoon in the wrapping; there was a tiny war between questions and more solid, warm food than he'd seen in a long time, and food won, with all the grace of a starving dog that expected the food to vanish any minute. The Allseer just took the other chair, waiting calmly until it was empty and he'd slowed down.
He had a moment staring at the empty box, finally sort of processing what was going on and suddenly feeling all the more like he'd ceased to know what was going on.
“Ah, Allseer?”
The older man waved the title away. “Louisoix is fine.”
Somewhere in the confusion of what just happened and his grasp of how the world worked and how to respond, that broke something. He opened his mouth to say something, forgot what it was, and closed his mouth again, having lost all ability to make sense of the man that'd just honestly probably saved his life.
Louisoix, at least, was waiting this out patiently and oddly contentedly.
And then the door blew open to a Hyur lady, heavy spiked gauntlets that were more weapon than protection hanging from her belt, heavy-armored boots and leggings, with an obscuring mask over her face that he recognized as more of a warning sign than a blinder. The details came through in that moment of processing that came from alarm and confusion and overrode the fact that she'd blown in as a blur.
“THERE YOU ARE we were trying to find you Urianger's been refusing to leave the library again and he keeps grumbling about fortifications and Papalymo was trying to get him to accept a drink so he'd at least wait until tomorrow to start tearing out walls and-”
She noticed Thancred, and he was suddenly mildly terrified and not sure why.
“Oh is this the one you were looking for?”
“Yes, he is.”
That got a nice processing moment and an even more confusing blank blink; they were looking for him?
It was interrupted by a high pitched noise that should not have come from anything human and getting tackle-hugged with enough force to push his chair back closer to the wall. “That means we're family now!”
“A-ah?”, was all he managed.
Louisoix was making some kind of hand gesture that was definitely a signal, but it took a moment for her to notice and let go of him. She stepped back, but was rocking back and forth on her heels, as if “still” was a word not in her vocabulary at that moment.
“He's been through a great deal, Yda; give him some space and time to adjust.” For all that the words were chiding, the tone was fond and Thancred had the feeling there was a little effort to not be laughing.
“Ah, sorry!” She was noticeably lowering her voice. “Do you want me to tell Urianger to sleep for you?”
“Likely a good idea; there won't be another intrusion anytime soon, he has time.”
“Okay!”
The door shut with a click and she was gone almost as fast as she'd arrived.
“...What just happened?” He made a few vague gestures to the door.
“You've been adopted.”
“Ah.” A pause. “...What?” He'd agreed to lead to where the Ascian was holed up, “Adopted” was not something he'd expected to be part of the bargain.
“Adopted. You've been released into my custody, and if you are willing to accept it, you are welcome to stay on after your Ascian problem is handled.”
He hadn't even done anything yet, and the world had decided to turn inside out and upside down. “...Why?”
“Among other things, we could use someone of your skills. Most of it will make sense in due time, and there's no need to decide now; Yda is often over-exuberant.” Louisoix chuckled with a side glance to the door.
He was starting to wonder if he'd walked into some kind of prophecy, and if so, what the Twelve were drinking. “I am glad to have it, but....why are you trusting me so easily?” He knew he'd been sketchy as all Hell, and didn't exactly have the best background; having an Archon swoop in, take everything he said at face value (which was nice, he hadn't been lying, but really), and offer an adoption after pulling him out of prison was beyond confusing.
Louisoix went quieter. “Mattye was not someone I worked with as often as others, but he was a friend; he spoke often of you, and your friend, and the other children he'd been taking time to teach. He cared for all of them, even though he knew how oft the difference between a predator and a victim in worse places is simply who had the opportunity and was desperate or hurt enough to take it.” Thancred nodded, silently, the lump forming in his throat again. “He was a very compassionate man, who cared deeply about others' suffering, but he did not give real trust lightly, and he trusted you.”
He stayed quiet, feeling all the more tired, and heavy, with a dull ache in his chest.
“You haven't had any time to rest since it happened, have you.”
He managed a weak headshake.
“We'll be needing a day or two to prepare, and it's safe here; you can stop fighting for a little while.” He didn't entirely notice movement until Louisoix had a hand over his on the table, brushing just enough for contact. He tried to say something, but it choked out before he could manage. “He cared about you; it's good to remember that.”
He slumped over the table, burying his face in his arms sobbing; he caught the scrape of the other chair moving and a hand on his shoulder, quiet, soothing words here and there that he wasn't paying enough attention to make out.
By the time he managed something resembling composure again, it was dark out; Louisoix had stayed the entire time, only moving when he started to still to come back with a pitcher of water and a filled glass nudged over to him.
He felt like hell, his head hurt, his throat was raw, and his sleeve and the table were covered with the ink from his hair. He drained the water, giving the glass a bleary blink and staring at it on the table.
“How are you feeling?”
He looked up flatly.
“It takes time to heal; you've been stronger than many would've been after going through something like that.” Louisoix's voice had genuine sympathy; he moved to refill the glass. “There are many others here that felt his loss; would that we could've found you in time for you to have attended his funeral.”
It had been long enough for that to have passed, hadn't it.
“He had the accomplishments to've aimed for a seat on a council, but he never made an attempt; he said it would've left him without the time to do the work he wanted, although when he did speak, he was well-respected, and he'd gained some recognition from the homeland for his ancient history work. Of course he was also known for odd random delays because he set his work aside to get a student set up with their own research, or to disappear off into the city for a while; I imagine if you mention having been one of his students from the city, you'll find no lack of others who remember him fondly.”
“You say that like it would be enough to fit in here.” He drained the water again, something that seemed to edge back towards feeling human.
“Some things are different, others are much the same; many of the students here would be sheltered by comparison, but I have yet to find a place where the people did not have joys, fears, griefs, loves and worries.”
He gave a sideways glance at the box. “I would've only gotten a meal like that by scraping or getting lucky.”
Louisoix didn't answer, simply folding his hands on the table in front of him, waiting calmly. As quiet as the gesture was, something about the prompt that made him nervous enough to start picking at the part of his sleeve that was stiff, looking down at the table. There was a mess of things he didn't want to say, that sounded ungrateful or backwards, knowing that this was the sort of thing most of the people he grew up with might've killed for, that he still didn't know where Ives was...
And there was this odd, sinking feeling that he wasn't going to get away without saying something.
“I don't – belong here. Half the people I know are dead, the other half might be soon, I haven't heard from nor seen Ives in a week, and – it doesn't feel right staying here.”
Louisoix leaned back in his chair. “It will be stopped; you've brought us the last thing that we needed, the ability to find it. You've done the best that you could, and you will save lives that would've been lost.”
He shifted, turning his head away, twisting the fabric of sleeve between his fingers.
“Would making yourself suffer do anyone else any good?”
He started to answer, but anything he could think of as a counter sounded immensely stupid before he could even get it out.
“There were, and still are, people that care about you; I'm sure they'd rather see you cared for.”
He nodded, feeling numb and off again.
Louisoix nodded to a small door in back. “There is running water for a bath, assuming they aren't trying to re-invent the pipes again, and we should be able to scrounge you something else to wear come morning; will you be alright here alone?”
The room already felt large, empty, and alien, but he nodded; he'd slept in hollowed-out snow before alone, why would this be any worse? Louisoix raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment, standing from his chair and retrieving his staff from where he'd leaned it against the wall. “Take care of yourself, and sleep well.” he briefly rested a hand on Thancred's shoulder on his way out of the room.
The water didn't come out much warmer than the streams he was used to dealing with, and he didn't care to bother checking if there was a way to heat it. It did contribute to feeling a little less like something scraped off a sidewalk, but it didn't do a huge amount for the headache. He tried going to bed, curling up in the blankets, but “sleep well” was easier said than done; having an actual bed was something he wasn't that used to in and of itself, and the room was quiet. No real background noise of street traffic, no regular clanking of gears.
He got up once to crack the window, half hoping it would at least bring some sound in, and realized that he'd lost a little more track of where he was than he'd thought while he'd been following Louisoix in a daze, and that there had to've been more stairs than he remembered paying attention to; it had to be one of the towers, and up just high enough that it was taller than the buildings in the outlying city save for the outer towers of the wall.
There was snow falling; it was a still night, clouded over, and the kind of view of the rooftops he'd usually only seen when he'd gotten restless enough to climb the clocktower up to the maintenance rooms for the face and the upper tower. From the vantage point in the center of the city, he could almost trace out the different parts of the city by how well-lit they were, brighter and darker patches where there were the people and funds enough to keep up the gaslights in the street. He could pick out a few familiar rooftops, enough to tell about where the clocktower had to be, a dim shape in among all of the others.
Maybe he should've found a way to leave some kind of note in the clocktower; if he was safe now, he could probably ask, come morning, if he could duck there to leave a message, that he was safe and had found help, just in case Ives had gone to ground and might try to check back. Lady Lyons and Edine, too, although the former would kill him if she ever found out how he'd managed to get Louisoix's attention.
He could also pick out the library building, and where the small offshoot tower he'd broken into was; it really would've been a dumb idea to try climbing it, it was over some of the rest of the college district.
Mattye had always been an odd sort of visitor, someone that was out of place in the slums, but one that did enough to help that he normally wouldn't have needed guards if someone was threatening him; the worst worry he'd ever thought he'd have was that he'd butt heads too much with one of the worse organized criminal groups, the ones that actually did have power. Getting out to something better had been something they'd been trying to get, but now that he was sitting in a room in the college, it didn't quite feel real; like he'd wake up the next morning to the clock creaking, with the place where Mattye was an authority figure that spoke to councils and helped people set up labs some kind of strange dream, painted over the place where Mattye had been the near-foreign figure that taught kids to read and would try to bring food with him so people could eat.
Louisoix was something that belonged in some ballad or storybook, Thaliak's own hand; he wasn't sure if the awe-tinged stories of the Archon and Allseer seemed warped next to the calm older man that'd stayed close while he was crying and talked about Mattye-the-Academic, or like something that somehow explained the whole thing. The idea that the thin, occasionally awkward man with a tome that'd sat cross-legged on the cobblestones tracing out letters in the dirt took tea with the Allseer just made the whole thing feel more like a disjointed dream.
The cold from leaning in the window started to get more noticeable, and there wasn't enough wind for any good sense of noise from it; he closed it, latching the lock, closing the curtains, and returning to the bed and blankets.
The strange lady'd called him “family now”, and there was that offer of adoption; the best plans he'd ever had involved getting enough together to start traveling as an adventurer, or maybe try to get into the college and volunteer for expeditions out digging into ruins in Mor Dhona or something. It was close to what he'd wanted all along, dropped on his lap like some drunken wobble of fate trying to make up for the ordeals, but he couldn't quite shake a feeling of guilt over it, and worry over what would happen to Ives, if something hadn't already happened to him. Ives had talked about taking to the seas and signing on with a corsair crew out of Limsa, he'd talked about Mor Dhona, and it'd always been framed as if it'd be one or the other with both of them going, never really addressing the basic contradictions that Thancred would make a horrible pirate and Ives would be a train wreck as a scholar because they never really wanted to admit that it wasn't likely either would happen, anyway. Going off adventuring had been a compromise they both agreed would be something they'd be happy with; if he accepted it, and Ives was still alive, would Louisoix be willing to accept him, too?
And he hated to admit it, but he did worry about what Ives would do with himself left alone; he'd had a habit of occasionally nudging that 'predator' line, and Thancred wasn't sure how well he'd do at stepping away from it without someone to poke him away from the temptation to do something he'd regret later, or get into something he couldn't handle.
He fell asleep somewhere in all of the circles, crashing harder than he'd thought would happen.
Summary: Snowballed headcanon!
Chapter Summary: Thancred gets
Warnings: Getting hit over the head with "YOU CAN MOURN ALREADY STUPID". Yda. Some swearing that might be recognizable here as such?
He woke up in a cell, with shackles around his wrists and ankles, chains connecting the wrist pieces together and the ankle bracers to each other, enough that it would be hard to walk. The window was barely a head's width, eight feet up in the wall, and was more heavy metal grid than anything; there was metal inlay in the walls that probably amounted to some kind of magic suppression, and further inlay on the metal bars of the cell. Ground level must've been close to the tiny window judging by the dim lighting, the hallway lit by gaslights hanging from the grey stone, and there was one of the guard's mages with a rod handy, standing guard.
He had a warmer shirt and the pants he'd been in, but the outer coat and bag were gone, along with pretty much all of his few belongings, including the soulstone, which was the part that stung the worst. He had a few scrapes up one arm and the side of his face that must've been where he'd hit the ground, since the sleep spell had hit with him at the beginning of a dead run vaulting a fence; he must've been out for a few hours judging by the way some of the light bleeding had dried, and it looked like it'd been cleaned.
The mage had shifted a little more alert with him stirring and checking himself over, watching him warily.
“Isn't this a little excessive?” He tapped one of the sigils inlaid into the wall.
“With what you were trying to summon? No.”
Bored, cranky, and on edge.
“I wasn't trying to summon anything. I was trying to find a way to stop something all of you were ignoring.” Unfortunately, so was he – tired, snippy, and on about his last three nerves.
“We have been dead on our feet lately trying to catch a group of murderers – one of which you were helping.”
He stood up, wobbling a little and woozier than he'd realized – they must've been chain-casting to keep him out. “Now look here, you pompous stuffed up ass.” He probably should've thought before he put a hand on the bars to lean on them, but they weren't contact-trapped, probably just magic-suppressant. “I live down there, and I'm willing to bet that you liver-brained sons of puddings didn't think it was worth bothering until Mattye died,” There was some kind of chime echoing through the halls, and the mage glanced aside with a sudden look of faint panic, a hand raised for him to shush that only got the opposite effect; far from getting quieter, he raised his voice, hoping it carried. “And that was my mentor who taught me how to read, who got killed trying to stop that thing from killing people I grew up with, and I have been trying to tell all of you that there was a fucking godsbedamned ASCIAN pulling strings and trying to get you fighting everyone,”, the side door opened to the inspector, trying to shrink, holding the door for a taller, dark-skinned Elezen he didn't bother turning to get a good look at, “and all I ever got for coming forward was you assholes throwing accusations and trying to throw me and one of his other students in prison to rot while that monster flounced off to cause more trouble, and as far as I'm concerned, the lot of you can go and rot because I wouldn't be here if even one of you pulled your heads out of the rot-infested gut-holes you shoved them in to take three looks around and listen!” The mage was motioning a little more frantically for him to shut up; he did manage a side glance, to see the Inspector with his head buried in his hands, while the older Elezen man just had a bemused eyebrow raised; definitely neater-dressed, but he wasn't sure he recognized any of it, and the man's hand was resting loosely on a staff inscribed with Thaliak's symbol. “I bet you didn't even care to step up patrols until that stunt with the church because it was 'just' homeless brats and starving street trash before that, and every time it kills someone else, I want you to remember that I told you it was there when it first started!”
He hadn't really run out of breath, but keeping up that level of ranting while still shaking off a string of sleep spells had him feeling a little too light-headed to keep it up; he wobbled, leaning sullenly against the bars.
The older Elezen walked into the room, studying him with a considering look, and then looked between him, the mage-guard, and the Inspector. “How long ago was this report of an Ascian?”
“Over a moon”, he hissed through his teeth; he'd started to loose track of time with everything going on. The Inspector had his mouth open to answer, but ended up nodding faintly and gesturing.
“Why did I not hear of this?”
“Because he's a thief and an inveterate liar who's run scams in between more legal performances, and Mattye was killed with a blade; Ascians don't use mortal weapons, and the knife in question belonged to a close friend of his.” The answer was tired and matter-of-fact.
“Ascians are also loathe to move openly; they prefer trickery to cause chaos indirectly, and turning your guardsmen and the poor against each other would certainly manage that.” The man walked over, looking him over. “Might I ask your name?”
Well, he was less obnoxious than the inspectors. “Thancred.”
He nodded slowly, voice calm and fond. “Mattye has written five treatise on ancient Nymian culture, with you cited as a needed research assistant; he had been overjoyed to find someone that could access that stone. He was casting around to sponsor you into the college.”
The urge to keep sniping broke like a lanced wound; he slumped against the bars, a lump in his throat.
“Inspector? I understand that you had reasons to be cautious, and I do apologize for something we withheld from you. One of mine had a bad encounter with an Ascian in town not long enough ago, on the other side of the city; while we cleared out its beginnings of trouble, there was enough evidence to believe the creature itself would return. We did not want to play into its hands by starting a panic, but it was not unexpected that it would make another appearance.”
The Inspector glanced between him and the older man, nervous and uncomfortable. “Allseer?”
“Would you mind leaving us to collect his belongings? I will be taking him into my custody.”
“He's wanted as an accomplice to murder and worse-”
The older man straightened his shoulders and adjusted his hand on his staff.
“I'll go get them.”, the Inspector mumbled, ducking out of the room.
“Thancred.” he waited until Thancred looked up. “Do you think that you could help us find where it and its followers have gone to ground?”
“That's what I've been trying to do from the start.”, he answered weakly.
The Allseer turned to the guard, motioning at the door; he stepped back. The mage was still on edge, although he wasn't sure if the man was more nervous about him or the Elezen mage as he unlocked the door.
“There won't be any need for the shackles, either.”
The guard gave him an uncertain look, and unlocked them, hanging them over an arm as he stepped out of the way. Thancred rubbed his wrists, wincing a little at the scrapped spot.
There was a hand on his wrist, resting lightly, the warm glow of a small cure spell sinking in, the scrapes vanishing.
“The Inspector should have your things by the entrance, although it would be appreciated if you would surrender anything too recently stolen for return to its original owners; you won't be left to starve.”
He looked up from his wrist, mouth hanging open a little; this was about the last thing he'd expected from getting arrested, and he felt more raw and small than he had in weeks.
He followed mutely, not quite able to bring himself to pocket the soulstone instead of holding it close to his chest as he walked. It'd been such a stretch of having to fight and be on edge for almost everything, with so little time to rest, that he wasn't sure what to do with someone who wasn't arguing with him in a stuation where he wasn't under some direct potential threat just around the corner.
Now that someone actually was willing to listen, and he wasn't likely to need to run at the drop of a pin, he found himself just feeling tired, worn through, and lost. He didn't even realize they were back on the college's grounds until the Allseer had stopped in front of him in one of the squares.
“How long has it been since you've eaten?”
He actually had to think; he hadn't really been paying attention, between the dodging and burying his head in the one book he could translate. “I – think yesterday sometime?” Now that he'd looked up, he was suddenly very aware that they had attention, the normal traffic keeping a respectful distance but clearly taking notice. Between trying to avoid attention, the henna starting to wear out of his hair, and the last couple days, he probably looked a wreck, and some tired part of his mind that was still working was running over bits overheard and the realization that he'd just been rescued by one of the highest ranking people in the city, from the old country he'd heard stories of sometimes, and that it was pretty common to hear the words “prophet” and “Archon” associated with the man. Right now, the main thing that brought to mind was that it meant drawing a lot of attention and looking very out of place.
“Let's take care of that first, and get you a place to rest; you look like you've barely slept all week.” Which...was not wrong.
The Archon led off the square to a building off to the side, where there was an awning and a few tables outside still; he waited off to the side, distracted from whatever was being ordered by the smell of food and the continued awareness that yes, the Allseer coming in with a bedraggled mess was going to be all over campus by tomorrow, and probably half the town in a week.
He'd been expecting to be led to a table; instead, after a wait, the Elezen his new benefactor had been talking to emerged from the back with a cord-wrapped box.
This time the Allseer led halfway across the campus, into one of the larger buildings, through a raised hall between parts of the towers, and through enough turns of the building that he was too tired to keep track of, until he wasn't sure where they were anymore. There was another short pause where he ended up waiting in the hallway after a “one moment”, and then around a few more stairs and hallways with the Allseer carrying a key.
The room was basically a small flat, a bed in one corner, a desk, a chest of drawers, and a small table with a few chairs. He stood in the door blinking at it while the Archon set the box on the table and took a moment to light lamps and open curtains.
“You can sit.” The older man seemed quietly amused by the blank stare he was giving the room; he blinked again, nodded, and settled on the chair, tugging the cord holding the lid on the plain wooden box.
The box was filled with rice and bits of cooked fish, and the cook had apparently wedged a spoon in the wrapping; there was a tiny war between questions and more solid, warm food than he'd seen in a long time, and food won, with all the grace of a starving dog that expected the food to vanish any minute. The Allseer just took the other chair, waiting calmly until it was empty and he'd slowed down.
He had a moment staring at the empty box, finally sort of processing what was going on and suddenly feeling all the more like he'd ceased to know what was going on.
“Ah, Allseer?”
The older man waved the title away. “Louisoix is fine.”
Somewhere in the confusion of what just happened and his grasp of how the world worked and how to respond, that broke something. He opened his mouth to say something, forgot what it was, and closed his mouth again, having lost all ability to make sense of the man that'd just honestly probably saved his life.
Louisoix, at least, was waiting this out patiently and oddly contentedly.
And then the door blew open to a Hyur lady, heavy spiked gauntlets that were more weapon than protection hanging from her belt, heavy-armored boots and leggings, with an obscuring mask over her face that he recognized as more of a warning sign than a blinder. The details came through in that moment of processing that came from alarm and confusion and overrode the fact that she'd blown in as a blur.
“THERE YOU ARE we were trying to find you Urianger's been refusing to leave the library again and he keeps grumbling about fortifications and Papalymo was trying to get him to accept a drink so he'd at least wait until tomorrow to start tearing out walls and-”
She noticed Thancred, and he was suddenly mildly terrified and not sure why.
“Oh is this the one you were looking for?”
“Yes, he is.”
That got a nice processing moment and an even more confusing blank blink; they were looking for him?
It was interrupted by a high pitched noise that should not have come from anything human and getting tackle-hugged with enough force to push his chair back closer to the wall. “That means we're family now!”
“A-ah?”, was all he managed.
Louisoix was making some kind of hand gesture that was definitely a signal, but it took a moment for her to notice and let go of him. She stepped back, but was rocking back and forth on her heels, as if “still” was a word not in her vocabulary at that moment.
“He's been through a great deal, Yda; give him some space and time to adjust.” For all that the words were chiding, the tone was fond and Thancred had the feeling there was a little effort to not be laughing.
“Ah, sorry!” She was noticeably lowering her voice. “Do you want me to tell Urianger to sleep for you?”
“Likely a good idea; there won't be another intrusion anytime soon, he has time.”
“Okay!”
The door shut with a click and she was gone almost as fast as she'd arrived.
“...What just happened?” He made a few vague gestures to the door.
“You've been adopted.”
“Ah.” A pause. “...What?” He'd agreed to lead to where the Ascian was holed up, “Adopted” was not something he'd expected to be part of the bargain.
“Adopted. You've been released into my custody, and if you are willing to accept it, you are welcome to stay on after your Ascian problem is handled.”
He hadn't even done anything yet, and the world had decided to turn inside out and upside down. “...Why?”
“Among other things, we could use someone of your skills. Most of it will make sense in due time, and there's no need to decide now; Yda is often over-exuberant.” Louisoix chuckled with a side glance to the door.
He was starting to wonder if he'd walked into some kind of prophecy, and if so, what the Twelve were drinking. “I am glad to have it, but....why are you trusting me so easily?” He knew he'd been sketchy as all Hell, and didn't exactly have the best background; having an Archon swoop in, take everything he said at face value (which was nice, he hadn't been lying, but really), and offer an adoption after pulling him out of prison was beyond confusing.
Louisoix went quieter. “Mattye was not someone I worked with as often as others, but he was a friend; he spoke often of you, and your friend, and the other children he'd been taking time to teach. He cared for all of them, even though he knew how oft the difference between a predator and a victim in worse places is simply who had the opportunity and was desperate or hurt enough to take it.” Thancred nodded, silently, the lump forming in his throat again. “He was a very compassionate man, who cared deeply about others' suffering, but he did not give real trust lightly, and he trusted you.”
He stayed quiet, feeling all the more tired, and heavy, with a dull ache in his chest.
“You haven't had any time to rest since it happened, have you.”
He managed a weak headshake.
“We'll be needing a day or two to prepare, and it's safe here; you can stop fighting for a little while.” He didn't entirely notice movement until Louisoix had a hand over his on the table, brushing just enough for contact. He tried to say something, but it choked out before he could manage. “He cared about you; it's good to remember that.”
He slumped over the table, burying his face in his arms sobbing; he caught the scrape of the other chair moving and a hand on his shoulder, quiet, soothing words here and there that he wasn't paying enough attention to make out.
By the time he managed something resembling composure again, it was dark out; Louisoix had stayed the entire time, only moving when he started to still to come back with a pitcher of water and a filled glass nudged over to him.
He felt like hell, his head hurt, his throat was raw, and his sleeve and the table were covered with the ink from his hair. He drained the water, giving the glass a bleary blink and staring at it on the table.
“How are you feeling?”
He looked up flatly.
“It takes time to heal; you've been stronger than many would've been after going through something like that.” Louisoix's voice had genuine sympathy; he moved to refill the glass. “There are many others here that felt his loss; would that we could've found you in time for you to have attended his funeral.”
It had been long enough for that to have passed, hadn't it.
“He had the accomplishments to've aimed for a seat on a council, but he never made an attempt; he said it would've left him without the time to do the work he wanted, although when he did speak, he was well-respected, and he'd gained some recognition from the homeland for his ancient history work. Of course he was also known for odd random delays because he set his work aside to get a student set up with their own research, or to disappear off into the city for a while; I imagine if you mention having been one of his students from the city, you'll find no lack of others who remember him fondly.”
“You say that like it would be enough to fit in here.” He drained the water again, something that seemed to edge back towards feeling human.
“Some things are different, others are much the same; many of the students here would be sheltered by comparison, but I have yet to find a place where the people did not have joys, fears, griefs, loves and worries.”
He gave a sideways glance at the box. “I would've only gotten a meal like that by scraping or getting lucky.”
Louisoix didn't answer, simply folding his hands on the table in front of him, waiting calmly. As quiet as the gesture was, something about the prompt that made him nervous enough to start picking at the part of his sleeve that was stiff, looking down at the table. There was a mess of things he didn't want to say, that sounded ungrateful or backwards, knowing that this was the sort of thing most of the people he grew up with might've killed for, that he still didn't know where Ives was...
And there was this odd, sinking feeling that he wasn't going to get away without saying something.
“I don't – belong here. Half the people I know are dead, the other half might be soon, I haven't heard from nor seen Ives in a week, and – it doesn't feel right staying here.”
Louisoix leaned back in his chair. “It will be stopped; you've brought us the last thing that we needed, the ability to find it. You've done the best that you could, and you will save lives that would've been lost.”
He shifted, turning his head away, twisting the fabric of sleeve between his fingers.
“Would making yourself suffer do anyone else any good?”
He started to answer, but anything he could think of as a counter sounded immensely stupid before he could even get it out.
“There were, and still are, people that care about you; I'm sure they'd rather see you cared for.”
He nodded, feeling numb and off again.
Louisoix nodded to a small door in back. “There is running water for a bath, assuming they aren't trying to re-invent the pipes again, and we should be able to scrounge you something else to wear come morning; will you be alright here alone?”
The room already felt large, empty, and alien, but he nodded; he'd slept in hollowed-out snow before alone, why would this be any worse? Louisoix raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment, standing from his chair and retrieving his staff from where he'd leaned it against the wall. “Take care of yourself, and sleep well.” he briefly rested a hand on Thancred's shoulder on his way out of the room.
The water didn't come out much warmer than the streams he was used to dealing with, and he didn't care to bother checking if there was a way to heat it. It did contribute to feeling a little less like something scraped off a sidewalk, but it didn't do a huge amount for the headache. He tried going to bed, curling up in the blankets, but “sleep well” was easier said than done; having an actual bed was something he wasn't that used to in and of itself, and the room was quiet. No real background noise of street traffic, no regular clanking of gears.
He got up once to crack the window, half hoping it would at least bring some sound in, and realized that he'd lost a little more track of where he was than he'd thought while he'd been following Louisoix in a daze, and that there had to've been more stairs than he remembered paying attention to; it had to be one of the towers, and up just high enough that it was taller than the buildings in the outlying city save for the outer towers of the wall.
There was snow falling; it was a still night, clouded over, and the kind of view of the rooftops he'd usually only seen when he'd gotten restless enough to climb the clocktower up to the maintenance rooms for the face and the upper tower. From the vantage point in the center of the city, he could almost trace out the different parts of the city by how well-lit they were, brighter and darker patches where there were the people and funds enough to keep up the gaslights in the street. He could pick out a few familiar rooftops, enough to tell about where the clocktower had to be, a dim shape in among all of the others.
Maybe he should've found a way to leave some kind of note in the clocktower; if he was safe now, he could probably ask, come morning, if he could duck there to leave a message, that he was safe and had found help, just in case Ives had gone to ground and might try to check back. Lady Lyons and Edine, too, although the former would kill him if she ever found out how he'd managed to get Louisoix's attention.
He could also pick out the library building, and where the small offshoot tower he'd broken into was; it really would've been a dumb idea to try climbing it, it was over some of the rest of the college district.
Mattye had always been an odd sort of visitor, someone that was out of place in the slums, but one that did enough to help that he normally wouldn't have needed guards if someone was threatening him; the worst worry he'd ever thought he'd have was that he'd butt heads too much with one of the worse organized criminal groups, the ones that actually did have power. Getting out to something better had been something they'd been trying to get, but now that he was sitting in a room in the college, it didn't quite feel real; like he'd wake up the next morning to the clock creaking, with the place where Mattye was an authority figure that spoke to councils and helped people set up labs some kind of strange dream, painted over the place where Mattye had been the near-foreign figure that taught kids to read and would try to bring food with him so people could eat.
Louisoix was something that belonged in some ballad or storybook, Thaliak's own hand; he wasn't sure if the awe-tinged stories of the Archon and Allseer seemed warped next to the calm older man that'd stayed close while he was crying and talked about Mattye-the-Academic, or like something that somehow explained the whole thing. The idea that the thin, occasionally awkward man with a tome that'd sat cross-legged on the cobblestones tracing out letters in the dirt took tea with the Allseer just made the whole thing feel more like a disjointed dream.
The cold from leaning in the window started to get more noticeable, and there wasn't enough wind for any good sense of noise from it; he closed it, latching the lock, closing the curtains, and returning to the bed and blankets.
The strange lady'd called him “family now”, and there was that offer of adoption; the best plans he'd ever had involved getting enough together to start traveling as an adventurer, or maybe try to get into the college and volunteer for expeditions out digging into ruins in Mor Dhona or something. It was close to what he'd wanted all along, dropped on his lap like some drunken wobble of fate trying to make up for the ordeals, but he couldn't quite shake a feeling of guilt over it, and worry over what would happen to Ives, if something hadn't already happened to him. Ives had talked about taking to the seas and signing on with a corsair crew out of Limsa, he'd talked about Mor Dhona, and it'd always been framed as if it'd be one or the other with both of them going, never really addressing the basic contradictions that Thancred would make a horrible pirate and Ives would be a train wreck as a scholar because they never really wanted to admit that it wasn't likely either would happen, anyway. Going off adventuring had been a compromise they both agreed would be something they'd be happy with; if he accepted it, and Ives was still alive, would Louisoix be willing to accept him, too?
And he hated to admit it, but he did worry about what Ives would do with himself left alone; he'd had a habit of occasionally nudging that 'predator' line, and Thancred wasn't sure how well he'd do at stepping away from it without someone to poke him away from the temptation to do something he'd regret later, or get into something he couldn't handle.
He fell asleep somewhere in all of the circles, crashing harder than he'd thought would happen.