should i be sung and unbroken by not saying—

[subsidence]

evening already

have you begun to drink?

Comments

[subsidence]

i care not for what you keep or where you keep it
twas only convenient for me that you do

[A gamble, in truth. Estinien has given thought--much thought, and reasonably--to what might happen if he were to perish far away from Ishgard. The news would take time to reach Aymeric. Upon learning of it, he might go through the trunk for one last look at what it meant to both of them. Or he might not. Perhaps he wouldn't have touched it for years more. Perhaps he never would have touched it again.

Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered all that much. But it was a gamble.

In the end, tonight is enough of an emergency to take the place of Estinien's own untimely death. It never was Ishgard that earned this from him, nor all the traditions and trappings of his post. The yearly renewal of Estinien's vows isn't owed to legacy and liturgy.

You could say Estinien is a disloyal man, but you wouldn't quite be right.]

now i can offer you a drink and i can drink with you
i just cannot do these things as we're accustomed.

but if you drink yours and i drink mine
will you accept this from me?

[embankment]

[The partaking of libations is something of a novelty, to be fair. According to tradition, the Azure Dragoon would be called to come and stand before the Lord Commander of the Temple Knights, who would bear witness to the renewal of his or her sacred vows. It required swearing to the Fury Herself that he or she was still of sound mind and sound body, and furthermore possessed of the will to protect and defend Ishgard from the Dravanian threat. Estinien always seemed to relish the affirmation of his vows, and Aymeric always accepted them for what they were, even when he wondered after the state of Estinien's mind. In any case, he doesn't quite recall if he offered Estinien a drink on one such evening, or if Estinien confessed to being parched, or some combination thereof. Aymeric kept the manor's cellar stocked with lovely vintages for his guests to enjoy, so it seemed only natural that he should share a drink with an old friend once the day's business was done with. It was also a novelty to spend the rest of the evening together, well into the next morning, drinking and talking, and drinking more, and growing closer... but nowhere was it written that they couldn't do such a thing...

Aymeric hastens to scrub the embarrassment from his face with the cuff of his sleeve.]

'Tis a fine year you have given me. A good year. Must have cost a mint and then some to procure.

[Now he smooths his thumb over the label, marveling at it, a bit. How long has this bottle been sitting at the bottom of his trunk? Only since Estinien's most recent sojourn with him? Longer than that? A year? Two years? Three? When Aymeric last went sorting through his mementos, the memories of two younger soldiers, it had to have been ages and ages ago... He knows a gift when he sees one. An unspoken apology, too. This apology wasn't meant for him to find until it was too late for him to find it, and that is why his throat is tightening all over again. Much more of this, and he won't have the wherewithal to swallow much more of anything. Not even his own bitterness.]

Of course I'll accept this. It wounds me that you should feel it necessary to ask such a question.

[The Dragonsong War is over. The only hunt that mattered has come to an end. It belongs to the gilded pages of history, along with the last Azure Dragoon's strange and fantastical place in it. But Aymeric feels compelled to say this next part regardless:]

And if you have aught you wish to swear by, I would fain hear it.

[subsidence]

[It isn't any shame that Aymeric does not recall the scaffolding of that first drink. It's enough that Estinien recalls it. It is exactly the right amount. It is, too, the reason all this has persisted--and Aymeric should not recall that, as Estinien never did see fit to explain it. There would lie the shame, if Estinien were to speak of it: his sore throat, the confession of it, the care given unto it.

That was what happened. Estinien confessed. It wasn't really that he needed something to drink. He could have gotten by without a glass of wine or even without water. But he wanted it, a drink, a better feeling, and he said that he wanted it. It was fine for him to say. Estinien recalls it. That he wanted, and Aymeric gave. He remembers all this because he realized then that Aymeric would give to him, and do for him, all apart from war. Such a simple thing, nothing to do with fealty nor might, but Aymeric drew Estinien into his home and let him drink. Aymeric made it seem only natural. While Estinien had pursued and then shouldered the weight of the Azure, he made fewer and fewer allowances for a laugh or a talk over a drink. But Aymeric made it seem...

Estinien never said it didn't drive him mad to be so alone, alone, endlessly alone.]

have i aught?

what have i?

[He recalls asking for a drink that evening because when the next year came he knew he could do it again.]

well i suppose i know. i've the night is what.

stop. you aren't wounded. i've nicked you at worst. now listen. i'll swear by tonight as it's all i have to give you other than the good fine year you've duly found.

[He will. He will do that. The things he used to swear by don't matter anymore; everything that mattered has come to an end. Estinien is as honest as the hurt and rage of dragons when he says he has nothing but tonight. But he will swear on it, if nothing else, for want of anything else...

He remembers the vows he has sworn yearly with more clarity than he remembers the songs his pretty mother sang. But the vows he says now are just different enough to matter--when nothing else does.]

I promise on my faith
That I will tonight be faithful
To the Lord Commander
And to the valleys and the ridges of Coerthas
Empty as they may be;
That I will not bring him harm
And I will not see them burn;
And I will observe my homage to him completely
Without deceit
Within humility.
I will be loyal of hands and mouth.
I will hearken to his words.
I will remember them.

[The Fury Herself has little and less to do with this.

I will in the future be faithful, he should have said, but he has only the night to swear by.]

and i presume it's enough to raise a glass to if you pronounce these oaths sufficient

[embankment]

[Only two people have ever made Aymeric feel this helpless, this indescribably helpless, to the painted-thin point where he can't even be certain that he's in control of his own breathing. He shoves his fist into the floor and heavily leans into it, breathing, laboring to breathe, in half-gasps of measure. It has been a long and good (and fine) while since he last had one of his so-called spasms, and he isn't about to cede that much to the unholy bastard on the other end of the line. The bastard who swears only by the night, because that is all he has with him, and in him, to give. The bastard who never knows when to leave well enough alone. Estinien, and his damnable father--they both had and in the one case still have the most uncanny ability to make Aymeric feel like he's trying to hold back an avalanche. There's no such thing as arguing with a force of nature like either of those men. There is the pain and then the whiting out of one's nerves when the disaster really gets rolling. He leans that much harder into his fist, until it must be purpling with bruises, courtesy of the hardwood floor below him. He doesn't think about what sort of helpless, frustrated, outright agonized sound he's giving voice to in this moment. Beneath the crush of snow, no one would be able to hear him begging for a miracle.

Come home.

No one would be able to hear such a thing. Even the gods would be deaf to the only thing that truly and awfully and so selfishly matters to him.

The time it takes him to reply is the time it takes him to get up and go over to the sturdy oak nightstand at the side of his bed. Now he's searching for the corkscrew he keeps in the second drawer from the bottom, because his Lordship never knows when he'll have need of it in the evening hours.]

Your creative flourishes have not gone unnoticed, Estinien.

[Estinien is free to imagine Aymeric smiling wryly when he writes that. He's free to imagine the shrugging of Aymeric's shoulders, in defeat, or something near it, because an old friend of Estinien's would know there's no upside in scolding him for his temerity. The sacred vows are meant to be inviolable bursts of divine inspiration, as any Azure Dragoon worth his or her salt would know. Very likely there are canon laws that Estinien is profaning just by deciding to tweak a few words and their meaning along with them. But Aymeric knows that it's useless to argue, so Estinien is free to imagine him smiling and perhaps laughing in a friendly, disbelieving manner. Aymeric does have that inoffensive laughter down to an art form, deploying it often in the course of everyday politicking. There's no reason whatsoever for Estinien to imagine Aymeric ripping the cork from the bottle like he's attempting to murder it. His hands wouldn't have a furious tremor to them, and his eyes this desperate sheen to them, either. It's all the careful and composed choreography of a well-to-do symposiarch.]

But your oaths are more than sufficient, and that hardly comes as a surprise. I shall see to your toast with one of mine own. To your night, then. To your faith and your fealty. Your health and your felicity. Your continued success in all you could and should and will choose to pursue. Together, let us raise our hands up higher.

Of the Sky, From the Sky, For the Sky.

[Please come back home to me.

Meanwhile, Estinien may imagine him selecting a polished family heirloom of a goblet to pour the wine into. Not straight into his mouth. Of course not. That would be coarse, and uncivilized, among other unthinkable things. The wine is on the sweeter side of possibility, so Aymeric ought to be savoring the experience of it, one small sip at a time. He isn't guzzling it like he's trying to drown himself in the glory of Vylbrand's most elegant vineyards. A mint and then some indeed.

His stomach, mostly empty, a companion to no more than a slice of cake in the morning, makes it all too easy for the wine to spread all the way through him. Estinien is free to imagine that particular detail, by the bye, being familiar with Aymeric's habits, but not what's due to follow from that...]

I must admit to hoping the Fury is not the jealous woman that Scripture often depicts Her to be.

[The Fury Herself does have little and less to do with their anniversary. So, imagine more of that fond smile. Imagine his soft and teasing tones, as with the tickle of down feathers. Imagine anything but the way he withers at the edge of his bed, spoiling himself further with one more draught of the drink.]

[subsidence]

[No upside. Aymeric knows that, as an old friend of Estinien's--there is no upside to him. And Estinien knows it just as well if not better, of himself, for himself. Estinien knows just as well what his proffered night would hold were they to spend it in each other's company. They would spend it shoulder to shoulder. They would spend it man to man. Being familiar with Aymeric's habits, Estinien knows what to anticipate, what to dread...

Being familiar with his own foibles, Estinien knows what to expect. To spend the night with Aymeric is to be a young man with his feet on the ground. It's the gap between two cliffs. Once, Alberic stood yalms away, across the divide. He said that Estinien must be able to go that far or he couldn't go any further. Estinien jumped a greater length than he had ever jumped, and he landed safely, but just before he did it, his heart was in that gap. Right then, he really was afraid of falling. He was afraid of what it would mean if he fell.

To spend the night with Aymeric is to be right there again.

Estinien gulps at the swill he bought from the haggard old man he came upon while roaming. The old man was tending his cook fire so he could boil a soup of stringy weeds. Estinien had looked toward the sun, which had trounced him in their race, and he told himself a drink at nightfall would just have to do this time. He gestured at the old man's flask and offered him the last of his salted hare for it. "I'm the winner here," the old man said when they made the trade. Were it any other night, Estinien would agree with him; that was good meat, and this drink is a sin and a crime. But it is a drink, nonetheless.

He bares his teeth through the taste. It fairly burns him going down, like bile. Aymeric, with his pricey wine and practiced laughter--now his is a sweet mouth. Well, good. Estinien has plied him with so many bitter bites as to feed all of the Brume, knowing full well of his desire for some sugar.

To my night and my pursuits, and to talk of jealous women. Estinien bares his teeth through the taste. Aymeric, now--his is a sweet mouth.]

your toast offers me overmuch, lord commander
all this for a man who has failed to appear before you

tis the one success i would have asked of myself this night

[His shoulders must be squared. Aymeric is free to imagine that. Estinien is always broad in the shoulders when he shuts his eyes and inclines his head. He keeps his apologies out of his mouth and upon the sturdy structure of himself.]

the fury, she may have cause for jealousy if i had said it all to you with my own voice

[And let Her be jealous. Estinien waits for Her to strike him. As ever, She does not. He drinks again; it burns again.]

i have no excuse
but at the least i'll not give you a chapped dry lip as you sit waiting for a promised drink

how is it?
if it's no better than mine i'll go and take back my mint

[He wants to know it for himself--the sweetness.]

[embankment]

[The wine is sweet. Not so sweet that it would be distasteful to most men, but this is a wine chosen with Aymeric's personal preferences in mind. In the midst of his desperate gulping, Aymeric has to remind himself to slow down--to appreciate the gift for what it is, rather than what it represents. He allows the wine to pool on his tongue, to spread against his cheeks, to sink around and in between his teeth. He allows it to seep down the back of his throat. It's the smoothest of descents from there on out, no burning, no backwash, nothing that would have him coughing or baring his teeth. It's sweet, and it's warm. It's keeping him warm. He reads Estinien's messages to him, and he drinks. He reads them again; he drinks. With my own voice... Estinen must be feeling the distance if he's willing to admit that much. If Estinien had said those vows with his own voice, Aymeric would already be undoing the fancy brass buttons that stretch from his throat to his navel. He would want more than his ears to know the contours of promises to the night's sundry doings.

Oh, to be a young man again.

In more successful climes, they would have begun the night with two glasses between them, and they would have taken turns topping off each other's mouthfuls. They would have kept their good friend warm and sweet. When Aymeric closes his eyes, he can just about envision--yes, there is Estinien, as proud as ever, his hair as wild as ever, draining his cup and then holding it out for a refill. And Aymeric, always the consummate host, the apotheosis of practice-makes-perfect... Effortlessly, he would be offering his own cup, his own refill, for Estinien to drink from. And it would be in this way that they'd trade cups with one another, and drink deeply of one another, until there was no longer a need for polished family heirlooms to come in between them. By the end of the night, they wouldn't even have need of the wine to know that warmth and sweetness.]

I knew you would not allow yourself to forget about today,

[But for as much as he's drinking now, Aymeric doesn't feel like there is anything left inside of him. It's that gap in between two cliffs. The empty Abyss that lurks beneath Ishgard. Estinien has cleared the deep hazard of him, and he has moved on, onward and upward, to ever greater heights.]

but what I did not know is if you would observe the olden principles and priorities of your station. [His former station, of course. Estinien has been most particular about how he is no longer the Azure Dragoon of Ishgard.] Even the common man's common man could tell you that ours is an era of change, of compromise, within and most importantly without our own selves. If this distance of yours is the compromise being asked of me, to make this progress of yours a possibility, then it is one I am full ready to accept.

Compromise! Now there is a word that for so long took a leave of absence from the vernacular. Have no fear, my friend: [Estinien is welcome to imagine him writing this impishly, if not with relish:] I shall go on ahead and help myself to your share of the drink, as it is rather delicious and deserving of the mint you put down for it. [He is certainly not welcome to imagine Aymeric drinking it because he has no desire to do anything else with his evening. The sooner Aymeric finishes off this bottle, the sooner he can bury himself in bed, and the sooner he can be insensate to the world.

He's biting at his lower lip, now, in hopes of holding it still. Please don't imagine its quivers.]

Be that as it may, I would not have minded the opportunity to get to know this sweetness with you.

[subsidence]

[It stings. Just so. A burr in the boot. Estinien has long prized the company of thick thorns to burrs; he has, many times, chosen impalement over a prickle. When Aymeric confirms Estinien's own sentiment--he knew Estinien would not forget--well, it's just the sort of sting Estinien has been so determined to escape. He has fled from it. In full understanding of his own cowardice, he has fled from being known; he has fled from his propensity for remembering.

Of course he would not allow himself to forget.

He has not had enough to drink for all the pain of this to leave, but he will not flee it even so. Not on this day of days. Not on this promised night. He needs to be running toward, not away.

Oh, withdrawal. He must be missing it. He must be feeling the distance. The ability to lie on his back as if in a pasture, with, yes, the burrs--the thistles, too--and the flowers that grow among them. The sweet grass. The allowance of lying down and feeling it. Aymeric grants him that. The weight off his feet, and a shedding of thick skin for the tender stuff that he was born with. A chance to succumb to comfort and discomfort all at once. If it were in a cup, Estinien would drink more deeply than even of the finest and most precious wine. He would drink until it drowned him. When he doesn't have it, all he wants is to drink it again, and if he is too close to it, to it is where he'll run. That he leaves it does not mean he doesn't want it. That he leaves it means he is aware of how surpassingly he would want it if it were on offer all the time. He would never be sober. He would never taste anything else, and Aymeric would grant him that. Even now, Aymeric punctures him with all these little burrs. Just deep enough to stick to and sting his skin. Ah, gods, it's delicious. Estinien should be there. He should have left for Ishgard sooner and his feet should have been swifter. He should be lying in the pasture. He should be drinking with his friend.]

i should be drinking with you.

[It's naked regret. It can't be anything but that. Rare, for Estinien, and potent because of it.]

i cannot observe the principles and priorities of the station i once held...
as we know i never did so to satisfaction in the first place

but of the principles to which i did remain true, among the highest is paying tribute to what has made me the man i am

[His loss. His anger. The raising of a pedestal, and the anguish of tearing it down. The violent and vengeful pieces of him he didn't know were there until all else was burned away and they were the only things left. Then, the need for comfort is not what's made him who he is; it was the rejection of that need that acted as the architect.

And then there was...]

you built me up
propped me up at least, load bearing posts
to the point that i could become the man who said the vows i did
even as they were left unfulfilled, i said them

and it has been some years hasn't it
since you agreed to help me become what i needed to become
even so

[The flask is going quicker than he thought it would. He's stopped grimacing at its taste. His own tongue doesn't seem to matter anymore. Well, he'd best get finished with his drink so that he can rise and get home. There are malms yet before him. He is feeling the distance.

Even so,]

my efforts amount only to the wine in your mouth

good at least that you like the taste

it was what i thought would suit you

[embankment]

[Before Aymeric even dares to think this one thing, he knows it isn't the most charitable thing to think. He knows it like he knows the blackest dread that once churned in his gut. Like the smell of smoke, and the twisting plumes of it, and the scout racing back over the hill, nearly tripping over themselves in a panic. This thing he's about to think is incredibly unfair of him, offering nothing of value, nothing worthwhile... To think this one thing in particular is to indulge in violence with the most deplorable parts of himself. It's as futile as the Dragonsong War had been from the very beginning.

He thinks, of all things to think, If you wanted to be here, then you would already be here.

Estinien's so-called regret always feels like more of a mockery than anything else. It feels as though he's only ever willing to give into regret when he is in the precise position to do nothing to amend it. Whenever he chooses to say on this night will not change how he behaves on the morrow, or the day after, or the day after that. He will continue to--gods, if the rumors hold even a scintilla of the truth--if the Scion's chatty receptionist should possess the barest understanding--Aymeric feels the room tilt and then sway and then whirl all around when he shakes his own head. He has never done well when subjected to a ship and the briny sickness that comes with it. Mountains are what he knows best, and what he has always preferred; there's very little that can take his footing away from him when he's on a damn mountain. Unfortunately, it's Estinien that acts as the avalanche, and it's Aymeric that remains buried down deep, with no one to hear his cries and his pleading, no matter how uncharitable.

Estinien won't be coming home for their anniversary this year. The sooner Aymeric accepts that, the sooner he can finish off this bottle, the sooner he can bury himself in bed, and the sooner he can be insensate to the world.]

'As we know'?

I must say I don't appreciate your eagerness to speak for me when I have no opportunity with which to speak for myself.

[For all of Aymeric's frustrations with the Azure Dragoon's eccentricities, Aymeric never once raised his voice against him. He never once presented Estinien with an ultimatum regarding his conduct and character among the members of the high houses. His duty, his sole and solitary obligation, so passed down through the years, was to defend Ishgard from the Dravanian Horde. Aymeric was willing to see him shirk the more frivolous trappings of his post as long as he saw that duty through to the bitter end. And see it through to the bitter end he did.]

I have been, and I will continue to be, your fiercest defender and advocate. I will not have it said much less committed to writing that the final Azure Dragoon of Ishgard was aught less than the man who duly served her people with distinction, courage, and unassailable honor. I will not have it said your dedication to the cause was less than a boon of the Fury's for how selfless and inspirational it had to have been. If you're to be remembered in the very least, it will be for the countless times you risked both life and limb for the sake of Ishgard's children and her children's children and the better tomorrow you promised them in so doing. Your reward for all that you did to deliver us from annihilation begins with our eternal awe and gratitude, and it sees soul-nourishing renewal with a national holiday to mark the day the Dragonsong War came to an end.

[...If Estinien had bothered to attend Aymeric's bespangled jubilees, he would have been regaled with this much praise and more in the speeches Aymeric always gives. And, yes, that which is written here is completely at odds with the uncharitable things Aymeric is still thinking, but it's impossible to be anything but grateful for Ser Estinien at the end of the day. If Estinien believes it worthwhile to be anywhere but Ishgard, to be thousands of malms away, then he is well within his rights to believe such a thing. He earned this leave of absence a long time ago, in the trenches filled with corpses, drowning in dragon's blood, and Aymeric's bruised little heart isn't going to change the reality of that.

The room is really starting to swim. Only the text on the screen in his hand offers any sort of steadiness, and that is by no means guaranteed. His throat is getting dry in spite of his drinking and his eyes feel like they're coated in the strangest kind of filaments.

Confound it all.]

But it would suit me best if you were to find your way back here as intention and desire might permit