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Summary:

“Gods know why you picked this place to summer home,” Alisaie laments, seeing the frost on the window war with the warm air inside, lines of condensation drooling down the pane of glass.

“I grew up in Thanalan where everything is hot.”

“So you took blessed heat and traded it for the godsdamned cold?!”

Zu’zu laughs in spite of himself, leaning on his cheek as he smiles at her.

“I did. I wanted something different. I can always return to the village if I want, vacation there with too many children, too much sun, too much sand, but I wanted a place of my own that could be everything different.”

It’s then that Alisaie looks away, picking slightly at the grout on the counter.

“What was it like where you grew up?”

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Zu’zu slips into the kitchen, which is less of a room and more of a section of the apartment boarded off by a pair of dividers and the natural barrier of the counter. He’s never really complained much about the layout of his studio apartment, but now with everyone crammed inside of it, it feels hard to breathe. Despite the freezing Ishgardian temperatures outside, he has the windows cracked open as he stokes to life a fire on the stove to heat up water. 

Behind him the chatter rolls, a small reunion of people who, by all rights, shouldn’t be together. As far as the world knows, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn are disbanded, thrown to the wings, but here in his little apartment in Foundation, they’re back together again, not as heroes, but as the friends they’ve sworn to be. 

“You’re missing G’raha bore everyone to tears with another lecture on Turalian customs,” Alisaie remarks, slipping past the dividers into the kitchenette with Zu’zu with a few empty cups. 

“He already previewed it with me, so I think I hardly missed anything,” Zu’zu promises, turning over his shoulder to offer her a smile. When she crowds close to the counter, he shifts over so she can lean on it. 

“Gods know why you picked this place to summer home,” she laments, seeing the frost on the window war with the warm air inside, lines of condensation drooling down the pane of glass. 

“I grew up in Thanalan where everything is hot.”

“So you took blessed heat and traded it for the godsdamned cold?!” 

Zu’zu laughs in spite of himself, leaning on his cheek as he smiles at her. 

“I did. I wanted something different. I can always return to the village if I want, vacation there with too many children, too much sun, too much sand, but I wanted a place of my own that could be everything different.”

It’s then that Alisaie looks away, picking slightly at the grout on the counter. 

“What was it like where you grew up?”

He’s seen Alisaie and Alphinaud’s home, spent teas with their mother and argued in the Forum with their father. All things considered, he knows so much of how they grew up, probably more than they’d like, he supposes it’s fair game to ask for the same. 

“I grew up in a cramped village on the edge of Thanalan, a place where its chief exports were orphans and bows. If you listened to Z’aria, it was the best place to find bows in all of Eorzea, Gridania can screw itself.”

Alisae laughs a little at that and Zu’zu smiles indulgently. 

“It wasn’t the worst place to grow up, all things considered. There were plenty of children to play with around my age, but as I got older, those numbers grew younger and younger. I was the oldest by many years when I finally left.”

“When was that?”

“When I was nineteen. I was all but forced out of the nest. Z’aria told me that there was an adventurer’s guild in Gridania and an archer’s guild at that, then told me to get lost.”

Alisaie looks almost stunned before Zu’zu waves her off. 

“I needed to leave. I wanted to leave, I just found it hard to. They were all I’d ever know after my parents left me there and I didn’t like the idea of them being on their own.” 

Zu’zu jumps into so many things head first these days, cold feet about stepping into the unknown feels like the trait of a different person. 

“I’m sure you had them all worked up with your antics.”

“Hm? Oh.” Zu’zu laughs. “You wouldn’t believe it, but I was a quiet kid.”

“In what world?!” 

And Zu’zu laughs harder. 

“I was! I was a quiet baby and, as I got older, I spent way too much time just staring at people. It put a lot of people off. Some of my earliest memories are sitting in the underbrush just watching Z’aria make bows. I’d creep closer and closer and, eventually, right onto the edge of her workshop. She chased me out of there the first time that I got too close and knocked stuff over. And the second. And the third. The fourth, she gave up, had me sit next to her and held her tools as she cycled through them.

“I spent a lot of time sitting next to her, not playing with other kids. It wasn’t until an Auri boy came to our village, Rotar, that I really made friends.”

“You’ve never mentioned him.”

Zu’zu smiles wistfully. 

“He was my best friend when we were kids. Supposedly, he tried his fortunes in Limsa, but our paths have just never converged.”

“Do you think he knows that you are…” And she gestures to him broadly. 

“Oh, absolutely. He gave me my name.”

“‘Zu’zu Duhawl’?” 

“Just ‘Zu’zu’, but yes. He couldn’t pronounce my full name as children, so he just called me ‘Zu’zu’ and it stuck.”

“It’s, what, Zu’walkabout?”

This time, he snorts.

“Z’uzuoaka Tia,” he corrects.

“That’s not a very Seeker name.”

“It’s not.” His smile is serene. “My birth name was, supposedly, ‘Uzuoak’a’. The first is an Ala Mhigan name and the ‘’a’ is a Keeper ending, but when I was left in Thanalan with nothing but that name, our Nunh renamed me, more or less.”

“Do you… miss that name?”

He thinks for a moment, a quiet sort of contemplation. All things considered, he hasn’t thought of that name in moons. It’s a fun fact about himself, that he has something that makes him like other mi’qote, but he’s never felt any attachment to it. When Rotar gave him a nickname, it was his pride and joy for years after. 

“Not really. My name is Zu’zu Duhawl now.”

“Think G’raha will take ‘Duhawl’ at the end of it all?” And Alisaie, cruel girl that she is, cackles when Zu’zu’s tail bristles and his ears pin back against his skull.

“We haven’t really… That’s to say we don’t talk about…”

“How many proposals will you two pass back and for before either of you ponies up and—“

The kettle whistles loud and clear and Zu’zu busies himself with taking it off of the heat to pour water into the waiting cup. 

“It’ll happen when it happens!” Zu’zu dismisses. “We’re— We’re a little busy.”

“We’re always busy,” Alisaie argues, nodding his head to the chattering group of people out in the main part of Zu’zu’s apartment. “I don’t think you two are going to get a better time than here and now.”

Zu’zu chuckles at that. 

“Is that so? Should we turn this little gathering into a wedding?”

“I think it’s a lovely idea, I’ll go post—“

Alisae gets a step away before Zu’zu grabs her by her upper arm with a severe look. 

“I’ll think about it,” he cuts across her. “But these things need time and planning and—“

“Beating around the bush for another few years?”

Zu’zu glowers, to which she sticks her tongue out at him and, in spite of it all, Zu’zu can’t help but laugh. 

“Just… a little longer.”

She holds his gaze for a moment before deflating slightly. 

“Fine, fine, fine. But I think it’d be a delightful send off before our journey to Tural.”

“Duly noted. Take the tea to your brother,” he dismisses, watching Alisaie retreat back into the other room beyond the two dividers. 

He pours a little more water into another cup before dropping a second tea bag into it—green, not a flavor he particularly likes, but one he’s been keeping in his cabinet for a few years now for a particular guest. 

And he thinks idly that, perhaps, a… ceremony of some sort would be nice before Tural. Before he goes for likely months without seeing that particular guest, throwing himself into unknown dangers. Refusing to act had been his downfall before and Zu’zu had sworn he wouldn’t let it happen again. 

The smile on his face is small as he add a bit of honey to the cup, stirring it twice before bringing to his chest and stepping out from the kitchenette. 

Yes, he would think on it. 

Notes:

Yeah, yeah. I know it’s the 5th and this is Day 2, I’m just a disaster.

If you read this, bless you.

And if you like this, feel free to follow my writing tumblr, @a-writing-otter

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