for whatsina_name

[travelerscurse]

It's so strange, being back.

Ishgard hasn't changed in hundreds of years, strange to think it would have changed since he'd been here last, but then, everywhere else he'd been has changed just in the time he's been there. So it's strange to be walking streets he knows from his childhood but with eyes that are so different.

Beside him, Emmanelain chatters on about the different facets of city life. He had made sure Haurchefant knew to petition his former family with as much discretion as possible. They, of course, had simply said their son had died and they were certain some fugitive from Uldah couldn't be him anyway. He hadn't expected any differently. He feels like that person is dead and he breathes on as someone wholly different anyway, but it's strange, to be being shown around the place he grew up in by a member of one of the High Houses, someone his parents would have killed for him to be friends with just a few short years earlier, as though he were a stranger to this place.

He has always been a stranger to this place.

Dressed in Gridanian fashion and tanned lightly by the sun, he doesn't expect there's anyone here who would recognize him. He'd been barely more than a ghost when he left, hardly a warrior of anything. But as they pass through the Jeweled Croizer and Emmanelain gets caught up talking to some girl he's been trying to woo, there's a sudden, strange sensation at the back of his head, something like and unlike the Echo, and he turns, eyes scanning the busy street for... something. Someone.

(For some reason, unbidden, he remembers the night of the Calamity, giant pieces of some other part of Eorzea raining from the sky..

Comments

[whatsina_name]

That lilt alone almost breaks him open again, and he feels a wetness merging at the corner of his eyes even as he laughs, curling himself closer and wrapping his arms around his lover. "I'd appreciate that," he says softly in turn, and while the tone is as wry as it ever is there's a sort of brightness to it. He's never been particularly chipper, but it would certainly be fair to say that everything that happened took a lot of the light from him.

Phillip stays mostly still underneath him for the moment, hands making a slow, peaceful slide over his body as they breath together. He hasn't shifted back yet, though he certainly will before they leave this room. For now... it sort of feels right, to show who he is and was like this.

[travelerscurse]

He wasn't lying when he said there was no such thing as promises, with him. There never have been. Not in this life or any other. He is, above all else, a wanderer, more liable to blow in and out with the winds than to ever try to resist them-- even for this, even for love.

But for once, he does wish he could promise, even if it was just something like I'll find you again. In every life, I will look for you, now that I know to look. He would mean it, if he said it, but he also knows there's no way he could guarantee it, no way to ever uphold his end of the bargain. Better not to promise, then, even if this is one he wishes he knew how to keep.

"I can't be what I was, even if I could remember," he adds, and it's more Gustavain's voice now, though there's still something achingly familiar at the edges of it. "But then, I don't think you are who you were, either, yes? I think, for me, it's enough to know there is a choice, and that I've chosen this now, regardless of whatever once was." There's a soft chuckle from him, barely a breath, "In that, I suppose it's not much different from anyone else, is it?"

[whatsina_name]

It is for the best, then, perhaps one of the reasons they work well, that Phillip isn't inclined to ask for promises. There are times he would like to- he doesn't mind Gustavain's wandering, even to places he can't follow, but sometimes it would be nice to assured that he would come back. But promises are all too easy to break, even if the maker has no intention to. Hurt and heartbreak lie too clearly down that road.

He lets out a soft huff of a laugh, shaking his head. "No, it's not," he hums, and maybe there is comfort in that. Even if he is much longer lived than anyone else on this star, they are still in many of the important ways the same. It'll take time, for him to undo that thinking, of being one of the only 'real' beings, but for now... he at least has this choice to hold on to.

It's always hard for him to voice his thoughts, and in this moment he doesn't really try to. Instead, he just shifts enough to find Gustavain's mouth with his, pressing in a long, aching but still oddly content, kiss.

[travelerscurse]

He leans into the kiss, finally shifting off of Phillip, but it's just to melt down beside him, curled as close as possible. His fingers trace quiet patterns on his skin, small and absent, but he doesn't seem inclined to keep talking, at least not right away.

"I wouldn't mind it, you know," he says, finally, "if you were to come with me sometimes. When you can." Because they both are and are not talking about other lives, but there's still this life to consider. "We could get into trouble together for a change."

[whatsina_name]

Phillip snorts, though it's followed by a soft little kiss to his jaw. "That is the best kind of trouble," he says, playing with the threads of the other's hair, "I suppose I'll have to fess up that I do actually know what I'm doing with the right kind of weapon." He's been getting better as a Black Mage, but calling on the Void is just so much more natural at this point.