Chapter Text
“Don’t ask me this. I don’t— I never wanted…”
Weiss didn’t quite plead, but it was a near thing. Gil gathered the larger man’s hands in his own, squeezing encouragement.
“I trust you to do it right,” he whispered. “Only you.”
He watched Weiss’ jaw clench a few times, holding his gaze and trying to send as much trust and faith as he could muster into the golden eyes staring back at him. Finally, Weiss bowed his head and let out a sigh that betrayed the soul-deep exhaustion and resignation that – to him – was the mantle of Warrior of Light. In another time, another world, it was his to bear... So it was once more.
“Pardon the intrusion, but it’s time to go.” Thancred hovered a few yalms away, hands in those big jacket pockets. Seeing he’d gotten their attention, he turned his back to leave them some privacy.
Weiss leaned close, pulling one hand free to cup the side of Gil’s face, their foreheads gently meeting.
“You come back, alright?” It was a quiet, desperate thing that damn near broke his heart, but Gil wouldn’t make a promise he might break. They both knew there was no good answer. He turned Weiss’ hand over and pressed a single sign into his palm: “I love you.”
The au ra pulled him into a fierce hug as he pulled him to his feet, so he felt more than heard him reply, “and I you.” He held on just a moment longer, then stepped out of Gil’s path. As he padded past, Gil flashed him one final, encouraging grin before he and Thancred climbed up onto the waiting airship. He didn’t look back.
* * *
“Weiss…”
A half-folded shirt in his hands, he looked over at the familiar frame in his bedroom doorway. Lea looked… dimmer, almost. A muted version of her usual spark and luster, long red tail and ears droopy and quiet. She bit her lip, weighing her words.
“Is… is Gil gonna be okay?” She looked up at him. “He’s coming back, right?”
Weiss put down the shirt, and pushed his packing to the side, patting the edge of the bed next to him. Any other day she’d have flung herself onto the bed, splayed out like it was her own, but instead she perched on the corner like a flighty little bird. She seemed to brace for bad news when he sighed.
“He’s…” Weiss cleared his throat. “It’s complicated—and I’ll try me best to explain—but we will see him again. We will.” A miniscule weight lifted from her.
“I’m worried, too.” He added quietly, shoulders slumped.
“Have you seen him?”
He shook his head. “Still just the letters. A call from Krile now an’ then.” Lea waited for him to continue.
“He’s managing, I guess. Still puttin’ on a brave face like always. Your brother’s a tough one, an’ been through shit like that before, but this was… cruel.”
“What really happened, Weiss?” She asked in a small voice.
He held her gaze a long moment before picking a point on the floor to center himself on, checking and re-checking that all the imaginary doors around his Echo were well and firmly shut.
“When I— we found him in Lacus Litore, he was in bad shape. They’d hurt him. A lot. Couldn’t say what for; the legion took or destroyed all traces of documentation. Mikoto was taken, too, and we know now that they wanted her for somethin’ with her Echo. The whole time, I thought it felt too easy to get to him, like they wanted us to find him, bring him home. An’ that’s exactly it. They— well, other shit happened but the point is, we got back to base camp, recovered a bit, he was up and talkin’ to folk like normal, an’ then when the commander asked for a meetin’, Mikoto found them almost dead. Gil was set off—triggered, she called it—somethin’ the Garleans did made him forget where he was an’ attack anyone around ‘im. I... was back at the Front then, so all’s I got is stories, but gods , the guilt pouring off him when I caught up, it… even with me guard up, it was horrible.”
A soft hand on top of his made him realize he was shaking. Lea shifted to sit closer, leaning into his side. He let out a grateful breath and leaned a little into her, too.
“He asked to be contained. I think he pictured a dark cell somewhere with the key thrown away as what he deserved,” he scoffed. “But no one was havin’ that. Still, the Scions had thought about this sorta thing before. Had spells an’ such ready. Just in case, they said. Bloody well lied to me about where they took him, but seems they need me there after all.”
* * *
Krile had contacted him and proposed a time, but not a place, until…
He blinked. “You want me to meet you in Carteneau? That’s where you’ve—”
Krile cut him off sharply. “Weiss, I need you to be very careful what you say aloud – we don’t know how secure our lines are. You’d understand that better than most.”
“Aye,” he said frostily. “I understand. Where?”
“Do you recall where we found Omega?”
* * *
Skip, a dark brindle-patterned amaro, landed with his usual rolling gait and ruffle of feathers, the hard-packed ground making very little sound as he slowed to a stop at Weiss’ signal. The small, yellow-eared silhouette of Krile waved to them from a nearby terminal. As Weiss hopped down, he grinned as Skip immediately shoved his nose into the tiny woman’s open arms, whuffling a greeting.
“Ohhhh it’s good to see you too, sweet fellow.” Krile chuckled, dwarfed by the massive, feathered head in her arms. “And you too, Weiss.” She added, looking up at him.
“Can he come in, or should I ask him to fend for himself awhile?”
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t fit in the larger sanctum, though we’re not especially equipped to provide for companion creatures.”
Weiss patted the saddlebags. “Brought our own. And if anythin’, we can make a short trip home.” He let the silence stretch a moment, stroking Skip’s soft neck.
“So?”
Krile let out a soft sigh. “Yes, let’s get going.”
She led the way down the ramp to the lab that had previously been a holding space for Omega, a giant beetle-like robot from some distant planet which, stories said, had come chasing dragons from their star. What he didn’t expect was for his lalafell compatriot to turn and walk through the rightmost wall . He and Skip froze comically mid-step until she poked her head back through.
“Neat trick,” Weiss said, stretching one hand forward and, sure enough, through the wall. Skip grumbled something about fae magicks, but stepped through gamely after his master.
The space that greeted them was nothing fancy - kind of ramshackle, really. It had the feel of a communal living space and storage at once, with crates of Ironworks materials and machinery stacked in corners and notes splayed across the impressively well-lit table at its center. A small but serviceable kitchen stood against one wall, a few bunks dotted the more shadowed areas, and a pair of mammets guarded either side of a great metal door in the far wall. Skip spotted a pile of discarded tarps, rope, and packing straw in one corner and with no ado whatsoever marched over, tamped it down with his wide feet, and settled down atop it.
Krile grinned at that, making her own way across the room with Weiss a polite distance behind. The mammets saluted her at her approach. She leaned close to and pressed a button on the grilled panel next to the door. “Mikoto, our guest has arrived.” A staticky affirmative came through a beat later.
She looked up at Weiss, who was pretending to know what to do with his hands.
“She’ll be just a moment. Can I make you some tea?” She gestured to the table. “I know you’re itching to see him, but there’s a few things we should go over first.”
With practiced patience, he stilled his hands and pulled out a chair at the table. “Tea and negotiations sounds fine. Do you have any green?”
She chuckled, hopping up on a stool to set the kettle heating. “Goodness – what are we, jailors?”
“Ahh, y‘know I don’t mean it like that.” Weiss propped one elbow on the table, chin resting heavily in his palm, and shuffled around the papers before him without really looking at them.
“Still upset about the lie, I expect.”
“That too.”
“Well,” she said, pause punctuated by the giant door whooshing open with a buzzing tone, “You may be happy to find out that we decided to hell with keeping any more secrets from you. The rest of the Scions don’t even know you’re here.”
“And that’s probably a good thing,” Mikoto pushed a runaway strand of hair from her eyes as she entered the room, clutching several notebooks. “Because I’m not certain they’d have said yes. It’s good to see you, Weiss.” She smiled brightly at him, but his attention was focused behind her, trying to make out details of the room beyond before it closed again with a whumph and heavy click.
“I, er—aye, it’s good to see you too,” he managed. To her credit, her smile barely faltered, and at his apologetic grimace, she waved a hand at him, as if to say, Don’t worry, I understand .
“To business, then?” She set her notes down on the table, sweeping other papers off into their own stack with a little huff. Noticing Krile had tea in progress, she muttered, “Oh, blessed be,” before turning her attention back on Weiss.
“To begin… how much do you know about aether? Its types, its effects, and what may influence it in a mortal body?”
Weiss laced his fingers together and placed them before him, gathering his thoughts. “I know what you and Gil told me about your experiment with Cid, so there’s the aether of memories, the physical kind, and that of the soul. I ‘spect there’s also some kind of celestial aether as well that we mere mortals can’t touch, but that’s prob’ly not what yer askin for. As fer effects, er… we use our own and that of the world around us to make–” he gestured vaguely, “–magic. Anythin’ made of aether can be set out of balance with an overload o’ some kind, on a small scale like lightnin’ sprites to a massive scale like the Calamities…” He trailed off, trying to recall anything else that might be relevant. “That’s the gist, I reckon. Did I miss anythin?”
The researchers stared at him, the kettle beginning to whistle in the background.
“What?”
Krile recovered first, chuckling as she took the kettle off its heat and set to brewing their tea. “Well that will save us some time!”
“I just…” Mikoto cleared her throat. “Sorry, I’m not used to people knowing next to anything about it, let alone… You’ve not been hiding an archon mark, have you?”
Weiss finally cracked a smile. “Nooo, no. I just listen, is all.”
“Well, you might very well pass for a proper aetherologist. Alright, well like Krile said, that saves us quite a bit of explaining.”
She took a deep breath before she began. “What we’ve discerned of Gil’s condition is that the trauma he was subjected to affected part of his memory aether to such a degree that it produced physical effects. From what we understand,“ she gestured not only to herself and Krile, but to where he assumed Gil was beyond the door, “the IVth Legion’s scientists altered Gil’s linkpearl to emit a highly specific sound, operated by a remote signal. This sound, in conjunction with certain voices — recorded and played back to him repeatedly under duress — now triggers an instinct-level fight-or-flight state, in which he thinks he is in dire peril, as though behind enemy lines and anyone around him is a threat.” She paused, holding his gaze with utmost seriousness. “Especially those whose voices he recognizes.”
Krile arrived at the table with a teapot and three steaming cups on a small tray. One of the mammets carried over a small jar of sugar cubes and another with some powdered milk. Weiss cupped his little mug softly with both hands.
“I see. So I’m guessin’ I’m one of those he was conditioned against?”
The two women shared a look, and nodded to him. He let out a slow breath, watching the steam from his mug swirl delicately through the air.
Krile blew on her tea. “The good news is he’s made a great deal of progress in shaking off the effects. We’ve been able to recreate the sound and tested voice combinations using our own recordings. As you I’m sure have surmised, Bajsaljen was one of those programmed voices, and you of course, but so was Mikoto here.
“Some voices elicit stronger reactions than others, though over time and with exposure, these negative connections are subsiding. We’ve done the most extensive testing, for example, with Mikoto — beginning with recordings and most recently carrying on a conversation while the tone was playing, and he is barely distracted by the trigger anymore.”
Mikoto chimed in then. “We haven’t, however, tried it with anyone actually in there with him.” At Weiss’ somewhat judgemental look, she laughed nervously. “Before you mistake my caution for cowardice, you didn’t see what was left of Bajsaljen.”
He winced. “Right, sorry.”
She shrugged.
“We’ve been over-careful, to be honest. At Gil’s request.” Krile gave him a lopsided smile. “So you, dear, will be the first person to be in there with him since, well… since all this began.”
Weiss took a long sip of his tea while Mikoto explained the mechanics of their experiment: he would be entering and locked into the chamber with Gil, unrestrained; they would play the tone over a speaker in the room, and Weiss would talk. There were restraints ready to engage if required, but Gil had told them he was confident he wouldn’t need it. They had prepared a script for Weiss, for which he was grateful — hell if he knew what to say. Hey been awhile, I sure hope the sound of my voice doesn’t make you want to kill me! Gods, no. There was so much he wanted to tell him, but it would mean nothing if Gil couldn’t hear him over the sound of his own adrenaline.
A few minutes passed in anxious, but friendly silence, until they all finally set down their tea. Mikoto looked across the table at Weiss, turning the cup slowly in place between his hands.
“Are you ready?”
He gave that half-cocked nod he seemed to save especially for times requiring heroics.
“As I’ll ever be.”
* * *
The underground chamber Gil had called home for the past several months was dim, lit primarily by the solf blue-white glow of electric barriers dividing the space roughly in half. The walls encapsulating his side of the heavy door were reinforced with layers of metal plates patched over stone. What should have been a cold space was actually rather temperate; the computers and machinery on Mikoto and Krile’s side of the room let off enough ambient heat to offset the natural chill. Lamps and rugs also provided small dots of colour and warmth wherever possible, but no amount of decoration could hide the fact this place was a holding cell built to house something or, in this case, some one dangerous. As much as they’d tried to steer away from bars, lest it feel even more like a prison, there were areas they’d simply had to use them, just in case the barriers and aetheric dampener failed; the latter was only active in Gil’s space, and while it didn’t entirely nullify magic, nor affect his physical aether, even the simplest of light spells failed within its area of effect. A raised platform at the center of his room was carved with concentric circles and runes. Though inactive at present, he knew it housed a great deal of electromagnetic power.
Gil heard the muffled metallic sound of the antechamber door opening, quiet footfalls, and closing again. His heart rate picked up in anticipation. This could go either really well, or poorly, but either way he’d see Weiss — the first flesh-and-blood person to enter his little cage besides him in months. Krile and Mikoto were very thoughtful and did their best to keep him company, but Gods, he was lonely.
“Hey Gil, are you ready?” Krile’s voice crackled over the short-wave radio. He gave a thumbs up towards one of the cameras and hopped up on the raised, sigil-covered platform. It thrummed to life, a soft blue glow tracing each line and framing the space.
“Barrier going up.”
The light flared and a faintly grid-patterned forcefield encircled the platform. Gilsat cross-legged, taking as close to a relaxed position as he could muster at its center.
The bay doors opened, smooth as glass despite their lack of use, and in walked Weiss. He took deliberately soft, quiet steps down those metal stairs and watched the doors close and lock again behind him, folding and refolding a piece of paper in his hands, before finally, finally meeting Gil’s eyes. The apprehension and longing there hit him square in the chest. They exchanged cautious, tremulous smiles, a well of emotion dammed up behind matching clenched jaws.
Gil’s heart beat furiously against his ribs as he and Weiss just stared at one another, frozen in place as though afraid the other would disappear if they blinked. He scarcely noticed when the barrier dropped, so busy was he retracing every line of Weiss’ face and checking it against his memory, relieved to have not missed any details. Krile asked if they were ready, and they both jumped at the sound. Weiss cleared his throat and, with visible effort, tore his eyes away from Gil’s and down at the paper, unfolding it while Gil picked a camera to nod toward.
A high, clear tone rang quietly from everywhere and nowhere at once. Weiss cocked his head, hearing it too for perhaps the first time. He glanced briefly at Gil, gauging a response, before beginning to read from the page.
Two words in and Gil felt pins and needles across his shoulders and his hair stood on end. Startled by such an immediate response, he focused on a single tile on the floor and began counting his breaths. He’d crafted a checklist of centering mechanisms over these many months of tests; the practice had paid off, certainly, but it was clearly very different with a very much alive stimulus in here with him.
He closed his eyes for but a moment and memories of Bajsaljen flooded in— eyes wide in surprise, then glassy with pain, sharp steel in his side and hot blood on his hands —
He sucked in a surprised breath, eyes flying open when he felt real blood on his hands, only to realize it was just his own; his fingernails had dug into the palms of his hands as he struggled to center himself. He skipped to step four: relaxing every muscle, one by one. Generally he’d do this to fall asleep, in the dark; this time he only blinked sparingly. He began with his fingertips, palms, slowly moved his attention up his arms, shoulders— the ghosts of hands grabbing him, metal clamping his wrists and upper arms and throat and —
Fuck. He lost focus. His breath was coming heavier and his hands were shaking, from pain or exertion, he wasn’t sure. Maybe the pressure of the test was getting to him, despite all his practice, or he was just extra on edge because it was Weiss, but this was so much stronger of a reaction in person. The checklist of practiced, measured steps in his mind was all askew, and he could taste copper in his mouth from where he’d bit his cheek. The edges of his awareness began to blur, a familiar panic-tinged fuzz threatening to smother any emotion besides fear and self-preservation. Gil curled in on himself, nails drawing bright red trails down his forearms, and shook with the exertion of remaining still, of clinging to his very sense of self.
He couldn’t parse any meaning from his words, but Weiss, bless him, didn’t falter. And that… that thought was what gave him clarity. Or, rather, what stoked a familiar fury . How dare they warp something so dear to him; take the voice of the kindest, gentlest, bravest soul he knew and convince him it meant him harm. Turn his trust, his love, against him. It wasn’t a new feeling, this rage, but it was all the more powerful for having the source of such care and faith right before him.
With a strangled yell of frustration, Gil slammed his fists onto the polished stone at his sides. The pain ricocheting up his arms pulled his consciousness the rest of the way back to the present. He let out a wheezy string of curses between heaving breaths, and winced as he grasped one set of bloodied knuckles in the other. Might’ve overdone it…
Weiss was still talking—and that wretched tone was definitely still ringing—but now that Gil could actually hear his words, noticed he’d very much gone off script.
“Gil, are you—? Shit, they said to just keep talkin', so hells, I’m gonna keep talkin’. If ye can hear me—well, understand me, then I need ye to know I’ve missed ye somethin’ fierce. Beyond words. Me an’ Lea both. The letters are fine an’ all, but it’s you we’ve missed, not just yer bloody conversation.” His accent was getting thicker as he went on. “I was gonnae wait til…”
He tried to look up at him while picking himself up off the platform, but missed the next few words as his vision almost whited out. He let the world right itself for a moment before getting up the rest of the way and taking a shaky step toward Weiss.
“Gil? What’re y—oof–” he stumbled headlong into his partner’s chest, ignoring the pain in his battered, bloody hands as he grasped the back of the tall man’s shirt. Whatever he tried to say, voice shot as it was, got caught on a sob. It was one of relief and gratitude and rage and grief all at once.
Tentatively at first, Weiss dropped his hands to Gil’s trembling shoulders, but couldn’t contain himself for long. He let the paper drop to the floor and enveloped him in a tight hug—a fierce, desperately longing thing.
“Everything… okay?” Krile asked hesitantly.
Though every nerve in it screeched as he did so, Gil levered one hand into a shaky thumbs-up.
“I think, then,” Krile said, her smile clear even over the radio, “we can call that a success.”