#sisila x haurchefant

[weatheredpileoftomes]

served ice cold

For FFXIVWrite Day 9, “fair”. Sisila, early Heavensward and then early post-Heavensward, spoilers through 3.0 and for dark knight quests through 50, ~400 words. Canonical character death, references to torture, grief, godtier bad coping mechanisms, implied murder.

It isn’t fair.

“What do you mean Lord Drillemont tortures people?” Sisila demands.

The fire snaps. It’s a warm spot in these horrible, cold, grey, miserable halls, and she’s grateful for it, but—Lord Drillemont is a knight. She doesn’t—he can’t just—

Haurchefant sighs. “Unfortunately, he is…not a good man.”

That’s an understatement.

“And he surrounds himself with many of the same, I fear.”

But…torture. Torture. That’s not right, even for enemies of the state—you kill people, you don’t hurt them.

Sisila opens her mouth to protest, then closes it again. She trusts Haurchefant. That’s supposed to be part of what being in love means, isn’t it? And…even if it isn’t, she doesn’t have anything else left. She was supposed to protect Nanamo, she’d sworn oaths, and Nanamo got poisoned while Sisila watched. Raubahn is probably dead too, and Sisila couldn’t even avenge him. If Haurchefant thinks there’s nothing they can do about a lord killing people, if they can’t gather a rescue army and ride in banners flying…

Maybe it isn’t an era for banners.

Haurchefant wipes the tears gently from her face, and Sisila realizes she’s been crying. “We do what we can here,” he says, and she nods.

*

Someone mentions Lord Drillemont on a clear, bright morning near the start of winter, and Sisila suddenly remembers his basement. They said he tortures people to madness, with or without proof of their heresy. And his guards—they do all that for him. They should have stopped him.

“We can stop them now,” Fray says in her ear.

Her voice is low and dark, something that tugs at Sisila’s wounds. “Stop them how?”

Fray shrugs with a clank of plate. “How else? You have the sword.”

She’s right. It isn’t fair that a good man lies dead beneath the snow while so many bad ones are still walking around. It isn’t right that Haurchefant, who always tried to be the best of knights, who gave Sisila something to believe in for months when she had nothing else, was killed, and Lord Drillemont and his men are allowed to ruin others’ lives.

If everyone else is too afraid to stop them, she’ll do it.

“Good,” Fray whispers, and the world goes black with rage.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2023 #my fic #my fic: sisila #my fic: sisila: gen #my fic: sisila: ship #it's kinda both. you know how it is. #my fic: 3.x #sisila sila #sisila x haurchefant #fray esteem #hashbrown hours

[weatheredpileoftomes]

crack’d from side to side

For FFxivWrite2022 Day 1, “cross”. Sisila gen-ish, Heavensward postgame, ~400 words. 3.0 spoilers; bad coping mechanisms, grief, referenced major character death.

Fray makes a persuasive argument.

“They should know better than to cross you,” Fray murmurs.

Sisila shakes her head. She agrees with Fray most of the time. She’s grateful to Fray for teaching her, for listening to her, for giving her the skills she needs to get her revenge. For understanding her when nobody else seems to.

But.

“It’s not about me,” she says.

Funny that once she’d wanted it to be. The Warrior of Light, the Hero of Eorzea. She’d thought if she could just earn people’s respect everything else would fall into place.

Zephirin had respected her enough to try to kill her. Her, not Aymeric or Estinien. The Lord Commander, or the Azure Dragoon, or plain Sisila Sila from bloody Cactus Bend, and he hadn’t even hesitated. What good is that kind of respect?

Fray smooths a stray lock of hair away from Sisila’s face, and Sisila flinches back.

It’s not the cold. The leather palm-side of Fray’s gauntlets holds no chill. It’s the gentleness of the touch, even through the armor—a knight’s hands tender on her skin again.

“Don’t touch me.” Sisila’s voice is too high, too thin against the desert night. She wants to lean into Fray’s hand. It terrifies her in a way nothing else has since before they stormed the Vault. “Don’t touch me.”

Fray looks at her steadily. Her eyes are bright as stars, bright enough to light Sisila up however deep the night is. There’s nowhere to hide.

“One rule,” Sisila manages, her throat tight with pain and rage and this new fear. “Just one. I do everything else you say. Don’t touch me.”

“You’ll do everything else I say anyway.” It would have been frightening if Fray had sounded…different…too, but she sounds the same as always. It just makes Sisila angrier. “Who else understands the harm the Holy See has done like I do? Who else knows how much you’re hurting? Everyone else who watched you weep gave you meaningless words. I gave you a sword, Sisila. Who else has done that?”

Sisila whispers, “Nobody.” She almost hopes Fray won’t hear.

But Fray nods and holds out her hand, palm out. “Listen to my voice,” she says, same as always.

Same as always, Sisila reaches back.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2022 #my fic #my fic: sisila #my fic: sisila: gen #my fic: sisila: ship #my fic: 3.x #sisila sila #fray esteem #sisila x haurchefant #sisila x fray

[weatheredpileoftomes]

paint it black

For Wondrous Tails of FFXIV, “sharing clothes”. Post-Heavensward, ~450 words. Spoilers through the end of 3.0; major character death, grief, poor coping mechanisms.

Sisila makes a request.

The law means nothing. Justice is a lie.

Fray is right, Sisila thinks. All that’s left is punishing the guilty before they can leave anyone else like this.

She curls her hand around the soul crystal. It feels nothing like her paladin’s crystal, the one she’d been so stupidly proud of. This one is spiked like holly, with sharp edges that prick at her skin even through her calluses. There’s no smooth place to hold it.

Fair enough.

Sisila stares down at the shield. She can’t even say it tore like paper—it didn’t. The metal has melted around the edges of the hole, bubbled and reset. Still, what good is it? Even all in one piece, what good did it do?

We have no need of shields figurative or literal, Fray had said. Her sword was more than double Sisila’s height, too big to swing. Sisila wants to learn, wants Fray to teach her how to use this power of darkness in the hopes that it’ll do something, but she’s just too bloody short even for that.

She looks up at Edmont. “I want his sword.”

Edmont looks taken aback. “His…sword? Sisila, I… It would be my honor to give you anything he would have wished, but…”

Sisila sets her jaw and looks up at him. She hasn’t cried in almost a week; she doesn’t know why Edmont winces when he meets her eyes. “I want his sword,” she says again.

“It is hardly sized for you.” Edmont’s voice is a strange kind of gentle. “If you were to try to use it, to honor him, and were wounded or killed—how could I meet him in Halone’s halls knowing I had let that happen to you, and with his blade?”

“I’m not going to get killed.” Sisila wants to scream. She isn’t sure how she isn’t screaming. “Please. I just—I just want it.”

Edmont closes his eyes in pain, but when he opens them again he rings for a servant. “Please be careful,” he tells Sisila.

Haurchefant’s sword looks nothing like the one Fray carries, or like the black leather and dark metal of Fray’s spiky armor. The angelic wings unfold from the gleaming blade to make a crossguard. It’s so bright.

But the grip is solid between her hands when she picks it up two-handed, holding it the way she saw Fray do. The length is about right, when she swings it.

She straps it onto her back and heads back to the Brume, leaving her shield behind.

#just a drk kind of day apparently #i have a playlist for sisila and the genre shift when “paint it‚ black” kicks in…mwah #wondroustailsofffxiv #wondroustailsofffxivwriting #my fic #my fic: sisila #my fic: sisila: ship #my fic: 3.0 #my fic: 3.x #sisila sila #edmont de fortemps #sisila x haurchefant