Edge of the Abyss

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Blood freezes fast in the Brume. The red smear frosted on her face, chin to temple, wasn't hers. Panting cloudy, white breaths, she stood over the man to whom it once belonged. Fray recognised him as the babbling drunkard who sat shivering, shoeless on the cobble, heckling every woman that passed. Alone, Fray was little more than a flicker in the corner of the eye but, for better and for worse— mostly, almost exclusively for worse— her apprentice turned heads.

When Fray first met her, she turned back. Stopped and listened to anyone who wanted to talk, even if the only words they had for her were vile. The peasants spit at her. The nobles cursed her. Ishgardians high- and low-born alike had never placed much value in hospitality, and fifteen years of isolation dug the trenches of resentment ever deeper. Perhaps that's why that man's mouth was so foul. Tangled white beard; chapped liquor lips; jeering— no. Fray hated to remember it.

The worst of the memory laid in Liborette's blank face, cheeks ruddy with cold and unspoken humiliation. Emotionally, she was good at listening and not much else. Fray had been teaching her to let her zweihander do the talking. Now little, red icicles hung from the quillion of her sword. They shook off and shattered on the heap of dark rags at her feet. She needed only a loose grip on the hilt to tug it up, just an ilm or two, then drive it back down, again, again. The corpse spasmed. Thump. Thump. Thump. Liborette stared straight ahead.

"Very well done," Fray said, "little Dark Knight."

"..."

"Were you on your way to me? A shame this fool settled near our usual spot. But it seems you've finally taken care of that, haven't you?"

"..."

"Liborette. Look at me."

Her gaze drifted over from the Brume's shoddy scaffolding. Once upon a time, her eyes had been a sheath fit perfectly to Fray's piercing stare. Today, she stood with her face half in shadow.

"Tell me what happened."

"When I passed by, he grabbed me," she said. Thump. Thump. "And... attempted to..."

Clang! The blade crunched through the spine straight into cobblestone. Clang, clang, clang...

"Enough of that." Fray sighed and waved her over, not unlike a mother wearied by her child playing too long in the mud. "He's dead. You can't hurt him anymore, and you don't even seem to be enjoying yourself."

"Sorry."

Again with the reflexive apology. Who taught her that? As she approached, she grabbed the girl by the chin and smudged away the frozen blood with her thumb. "Come," she said, and they fell into stride, with Fray taking shorter steps so their heels hit the pavement in parallel. "Today let's sit at the city's edge, where it's quiet."

"..."

They hoisted themselves up onto the parapet, facing out. The crenel was just wide enough for them to sit hip-to-hip. Fray leaned back to avoid gouging Liborette's ear with her pauldron, who didn't shiver despite her bare thighs resting on ice cold stone. Persuading her to dress appropriately was an argument for another day. She'd heard the excuses before. Heard them time and again, in every context imaginable, from what she ate to how she spoke, and now, Fray guessed, whom she killed.

Haurchefant liked it that way. Haurchefant told me to. It's what Haurchefant would have wanted.

Even on a cloudy day, the view from Foundation was fantastic. When she wasn't looking at Fray, Liborette was tracing the peaks and valleys of distant mountains, wrapping her eyes around a spire's silhouette, watching hawks circle and soar and fade into the fog. Quickly she had learned to never look down. As fearless as she was— as optimistic, as naive, as foolish and adorable— even a legendary warrior's stomach churned at the sight of her feet dangling over the abyss. When Fray asked hard questions, she couldn't hang her head.

"Why did you kill that cretin?"

"Ah—" The harsh tone clearly confused her. "Are you scolding me?"

"The opposite. I'm proud to see you defend yourself. I can well imagine the righteous outrage you felt as you cut him down... The satisfaction as he stayed down. But my respect ends where that empty look on your face begins. How long did you stand there half-heartedly stabbing a dead man?"

"... I do not know."

"Would you still be there now, had I not intervened?"

"Mayhap."

"Why?"

They waited while she fiddled with her hands in her lap, picking at the seams of her gloves. Simply lacking the opportunity to express her feelings did not mean that Liborette had none. Often Fray supposed she was one of two or three souls in all of Eorzea who cared to ask. Certainly she was the only one truly pursuing the answer. She could be patient. She could be persistent. For now, she reached over, twined their fingers, and asked, "were you angry?"

"More. More than angry, I hated him. I wanted everyone dead, the whole world over, and presumed one meritless, misogynistic, waste of a 'life' was good as any place to start."

"Then why stop at one?"

"...?"

"In your fantasy, it should have been a trail of corpses that led me to you. The whole quarter might have burned before I caught up. You're good at killing, Liborette. I can only imagine the violence you'll unleash when at last you hunt a quarry of your own choosing."

She dug the point of her tiny thumb between the armour plating Fray's fingers. Through gritted teeth she said, "I have already chosen. One must needs only endure the wait."

"The Archbishop." Were it not so serious, she'd laugh at how quickly, how endearingly the goody-goody little paladin had joined in the Dark Knights' characteristic blasphemy.

"Would that you could witness me, Fray." She sighed out a long plume of frosty, white disappointment. "You would love it."

"I'm sure I will."

"That man always reminded me of him. The beard. The eyes. The... the..."

She grasped for a word that Fray tried to supply. "The arrogance?"

"The impropriety. The obscenity! Th-that feeling that sets your heart pounding between your ears, with nary a thought besides, 'how dare you! How dare you!'"

She squeezed Liborette's hand, and let up only when she got a squeeze in return. Here was the darkness they'd set out searching for. It rested like a rock in a riverbed, low in her belly, a craggy fixture splitting the stream of her emotions. At all times, on the edge of her vision, she saw Haurchefant dead. She saw the Archbishop turn his back. She saw his airship, a speck floating on a sunset sea of clouds, destined for lands to which determination alone could not carry her. The Warrior of Light had but one option: wait.

Wait and wander the city she needed to love, for his sake, but feared she might come to hate.

Wait and sit with her mentor, who knew hatred better than anyone, but loved her... maybe.

"So," Fray began. "With your prey piteously beyond your grasp, you settled for his lookalike. Is that all? You've spared plenty who've done worse."

"... Indeed I have."

"...? So?"

She squirmed beside her, knocking some feeling back into her fast-numbing thighs. "You will disapprove of my answer."

"Let me guess," she scoffed. "Haurchefant told you to?"

"I... In the past, I allowed... I accepted..." In lieu of looking at her feet, she pinched her eyes shut. "I assumed it best to obey any command bequeathed to me, no matter how unpleasant."

Fray began to say, "oh, and you've changed so much since then..." but stopped at the sight of Liborette's tears, eking out between her eyelashes.

"I did not enjoy it. It was not my desire. 'Twas mere foolishness on my part. I awoke in this world without memory, without direction. I was ignorant of what I had surrendered to strangers who—" She failed to retrieve her hand from Fray's stalwart grasp, and so had five fewer fingers with which to hide her face. "Who smelled bad and scared me, and I didn't like it! I didn't want to!"

Fray tucked the girl into her side, one strong arm around her middle to keep her steady. In a cool voice, she said, "he taught you to say 'no.'"

She nodded.

"And to fight back."

She nodded again.

"If necessary, to the death?"

"N-no! Well, yes, if necessary. But if... If he was nearby, he bade me rush to his side ere coming to blows, particularly when dealing with those of high houses."

"Typical blue blood. Shielding his ilk from consequences he'd gladly mete out on so-called 'inferiors.'"

"No, he was never so imperious!" Fray held fast against her indignant twisting in both body and memory. "Haurchefant was kindhearted and fair."

"How fair can he be, forcing you to rely on his protection? What about standing on your own two feet?"

"He loved me. He understood that times come when even I tire of standing." Though her boot heels scuffed against the parapet, she was no closer to escaping the Dark Knight's embrace. "In my fondest memories of him— perchance fondest of all time!— he is quite literally carrying me..." She sobbed. "Shielding me..."

When a Coerthan blizzard threatened to bury her, he carried her back to camp on chocobo-back. When she was too tired to open her eyes, he carried her through the labyrinthine halls of the Fortemps estate. When they took up sword and shield to fight for their ideals, he...

There again, her last and least favourite memory of him. Echoing in her ears, the crack of his shattering shield. Tears froze on her cheeks. If she simply leaned over... Shut her eyes and held her breath... Below them the wind howled through the abyss.

Fray pulled Liborette directly into her lap, whereupon she immediately went limp, and became heavier with each stroke up and down her back. "Be calm. Take a deep breath. In through your nose, slowly out through your mouth..." With her face smushed to her shoulder, the inhale smelled of death. The exhale fogged Fray's armour.

"I tire of living without him," she whispered.

"He's not coming back."