#but the idea of the wol changing the past the way graha did in shb but being stuck there permanently for it was really compelling

[akirakirxaa]

FFXIVWrite Prompt 21: Grave

Rating: M

Word Count: 697

Warnings: Suicidal ideation, Suicide attempt, Blood

Summary: Akira stopped the Final Days, but is stranded in the past, with no way back to her future or her friends. For saving the star and averting disaster, the Convocation has done their best to make her feel welcome, but Akira can't help but feel empty inside. [Time travel AU? Not really sure what to call this AU. Same universe as Prompt 1 but it's not necessary to read that one to understand this one.]

Master Post

Akira sat in the dark room, not bothering to turn on the lights. The walls were bare, the windows just as decorative as every other room in the capitol building. There were a few small furnishings, nothing beyond the necessary. A small bed in one corner, a table and chair, and…that was it. Akira waved off the concerns of grateful Words that insisted they would be happy to make anything she needed or desired to make her comfortable. She needed to think about what she would need, she claimed. Maybe sleep on it. Not a soul on the convocation protested Elidibus’ decision to allow her to stay until they found her more permanent lodgings. Akira should be grateful for such generosity.

It was a shame it was going to go to waste.

Akira stared at her greatsword in the dark, the purple crystals a memorial to a future that now would never be. A blow that would never need be struck, least of all by her. It would be only fitting for her final breaths to be taken by these crystals, when their creator had been felled by her in his attempt to strike her down.

“Maybe your future still exists in a parallel dimension,” Azem had said encouragingly when she’d faced a room entirely devoid of the portal that had brought her to the past. “We’ll research it. Surely we can find you a way back to help your friends!”

Azem — Persephone, she reminded herself — was so optimistic, but the grave faces of other convocation members at her back told Akira what she needed to know. None of them would risk experimenting with time when they only just barely escaped disaster. Elidibus — or Themis, as she’d learned his name was — had insisted that they would do everything possible to make her feel welcome, and so far he was delivering, but…

Akira could not stop thinking about her dearest friends. The ones she’d completely erased from existence. And their loved ones. Their friends. People she never met and now never would. Places she would never see. An emptiness yawned wide inside her soul like a grave, ready to devour her whole.

She flipped the sword, nearly as long as she was tall, and braced the handle against the floor. Akira remembered Hythlodaeus telling her about how the ancients chose when to die, returning to the star when their purpose was complete. Was hers not complete? She stopped the Final Days and erased the world she loved in the process. What was her soul but a reminder of the disaster so barely averted? Everyone would be better rid of it. Would her soul even be able to join the Lifestream in this time, torn and damaged as it was?

She gripped the blade of the sword and angled it towards her chest, hands bloody as she clenched them around the sharpened edge. The amethyst glow seemed to brighten in the dark. All she would have to do was lean forward.

A knock at the door. Akira ignored it, glaring at the blade as she gathered her courage. Another knock, and she bit her lip, breathing heavy as she tried, tried to throw herself upon the sword, but continued to just stand there, hands tight on the crystal and blood dripping down.

“Akira? Sorry to barge in but I wanted to see how you were— Akira!” Hythlodaeus hesitantly pushed open the door that she’d foolishly forgotten to lock, only to push it out of the way as he hurried to her side, knocking the blade from her hand where it clunked heavily to the floor. He pulled her close as the emotions that she’d so stalwartly hidden just beneath the surface since realizing she had no way home cascaded down her face and into his robe.

“Why?” he asked, voice shocked. Akira struggled for breath.

“You said that… that once your purpose is done, you return to the star… That it was beautiful…” she choked out between sobs. He clutched her tighter, and they sank to the floor as he gently rocked her back and forth.

“Not like this,” he murmured quietly into her hair. “Never like this.”

#ffxiv #endwalker spoilers #ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2023 #hythlodaeus #elidibus #oc: akira kirxaa #wol #warrior of light #time travel au #canon divergence #stuck in the past #my fanfiction #my writing #fanfic #i don't know if this is a really serious au i'm interested in writing a longform fic for #but the idea of the wol changing the past the way graha did in shb but being stuck there permanently for it was really compelling