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Chapter Text

Alphinaud, waking to the same bone-cracking cold that also burns his skin, blearily stares at the bowl shoved into his face. Steam stings his eyes.

He sits up slowly, gloved palms to the rocky dirt. The aches compound, and then suddenly swirl down to a single throbbing point in his chest when he sees Izzie staring at him so intently she might be trying to catch him on fire. She is in my tent, he thinks, reverberating. How odd.

Izzie snaps her fingers in front of his face.

He starts immediately. "Oh, I apolo—"

"Are you feeling—"

They both shut their mouths.

Izzie continues to stare at him through the steam of the offered…soup, it would seem. It smells only half-appetizing, but that's an improvement over the usual fare of this trek through the gods-forsaken Dravanian wilderness.

Her eyes are so big and wide, vulnerable as glass bowls in a quake. The sight sharpens the pain in his ribs. He presses his fingers to his temples, hard, to pull focus somewhere else.

"Eat this," she insists, slopping it at him hard enough a little spills onto his pants. "Hells, sorry. Eat it." A single moment of apologia before harassing him further.

He opens his mouth to—

"None of Noel's paprika." She squints a little. "I know you don't like it."

"I was not...you remembered that?"

"Of course I remembered," she snaps — no heat. "You don't eat enough as it is."

Her skin starts prickling orange. Alphinaud tilts his head, too bleary from fever to remember not to be charmed by it. "That is remarkably kind of you."

"Well it's—well." Izzie's nostrils flare. He's close enough to see. That, and her blush worsens. "It's not that remarkable." You idiot somehow threads through the words. "Eat more. Maybe you wouldn't have gotten sick. Anyway—oh, you are definitely still sick."

Her words turn softer on the single turn of a gilpiece, which would be remarkable as well, except her knuckles brush his forehead, followed by the insistent press of her palm. She frowns; it's nigh as bright as a smile when she does it because it's so omnipresent upon her face.

She clicks her tongue. "Okay. I'll tell Noel and then I'll tell Estinien to shut the hells up if he says anything. Rest."

Izzie presses, insistent, upon Alphinaud's shoulders.

"I cannot eat if I lie down," he says. His voice feels far away. "Which would you prefer I do first?"

"Shut up," she says, immediately. "Oh. Right. You're being serious."

Alphinaud blinks. Blood roars loud in his ears. "Why would I not be—"

"Eat. Be quiet. Stop talking. Um. I'll get Noel."

She is gone from the tent in an overbearing flash of razor-cut red hair. A smile comes to his face, stretching over fever-aching skin.

She remembers what he likes to eat. Some part of him lives in her head, just as she increasingly stomps about in his own. The thought makes the spoon tremble a little in his hand as he eats — though it could, logic dictates, be the fever.

Chapter Text

Snow crunches beside his ear. Permafrost, supernaturally imposed upon Coerthas, is crushed beneath beaten leather boots. Alphinaud's mind spins. She can't be here. They can't be there.

Was his banishment to the First just a dream?

He turns his head. He's not sure why he is upon the ground, nor why the snow isn't melting through his clothes. Izzie is silhouetted against the gray sun, a corona of crimson about her long ears.

His treacherous hand snatches her ankle. Suddenly she isn't wearing boots at all, but those flimsy little sandals they wore in the Kugane onsens when their eyes went everywhere but at each other, laughing in the hot steam. It's just a bath, Leveilleur, you're dignity will live. His thumb presses into her thin tendon. A trap for a runner.

"Don't leave," he whispers. He sits up. The world is a blur because he doesn't care about any of the rest of it — just this statuesque girl. He stares up her long, milky legs, and he presses his cheek to her knee before she can stop him. He's rehearsed this in his head so many times. All the things he ought to say before his heart stops his tongue. "Izzie—"

Her palm presses atop his head. "You left," she says, quiet. "I didn't go anywhere."

The cold turns, somehow, into rain. It soaks his neck, his collar, his shoulders, not unlike during the march he took with Gaius Baelsar through Nagxia. Baelsar, of all people! Gods, he has so much to tell her.

"Where are you?" she asks, voice shaking. "Why did you leave?"

He looks up at her. Her moony face is blurry to him, not quite right, as if reimagined from three separate pictures. She's so sad. I left for you! I was wrong! He scrambles to his feet to try and seize her to him, and that's when he recalls: Snow and rain don't exist on the First. How is this happening?

The moment he thinks that accursed thought, his eyes open.

He throws his arm over his eyes. It's always light in his room, warbling in through the greenish bottle glass in the windows, because it is always light everywhere. He has no idea what time it is, but he is incapable, now, of lying still in his bed — not as this ache blooms in his chest, so visceral he rubs his palm against his sternum.

The missing is a bruise. It hurts and hurts and hurts with no salve to be found. Not yet, says their mysterious benefactor at the Crystarium. Not yet. I'll keep trying.

He swings his legs off the bed, boots still on, feet creaking the old wood of the Leaky Keel. He yanks his fingers through his silvery hair, hard enough to tear up. Get it out, get it out. There's work to be done.

Does she wonder where I've gone?

He pulls a musty, woolen shawl over his shoulders and he steps out into the blinding light, squeezing his eyes shut. He misses her like a limb. She might never know.