"Does it matter?" she asked. She looked at their joined hands. "If you'd known for whom I'd wept that day, would it have made any difference?"
"I…" A small slip of laughter as slight as the young woman herself escaped her lips. "No, I don't imagine it would have. As I said, I don't understand it, but I care that you were, that you are hurting." She turned her hands over, squeezing back. "You still left. If it meant so much, if it helped so much, why did you run away?"
Kit's eyes drifted across the room, far away. To the top of the Crystal Tower. To the top of the Rising Stones. To that dark, dingy corner of the Brume. To tears spilled and desperate pleas and another man taken too soon for doing what he thought was right. Tears stung, lower lids feeling tight and raw. Her grip tightened, at a loss for words to make Alisaie understand.
Warmth embraced her, dark and familiar, part of herself yet not, unseen arms and lips only known to Kit pressed between her long ears. His existence in her life was wrong and unnatural, but she knew now, despite how their time together almost resulted in their combined death, she could not live without him.
"I needed to find myself. I needed to know I could be something other than…" You are death. "Death. Destruction."
"And you found that being a dark knight?"
Oh, how she wished she could explain Fray to anyone. Especially to Alisaie. Sharing this reality with even one other person might have lightened her load, just an onze. But… what if it was Alisaie who would understand?
"When I arrived in Ishgard, there was a trial by combat of a so-called heretic," Kit started. They'd both spent enough time in Ishgard to know the intricacies of being branded such. "The local gossips said the man died, and I rushed to the Brume to find him. I thought…" Kit released Alisaie's hands and rested one on her own shoulder, over his. "I thought I healed him. I put my hands on him, poured so much aether into him I passed out. And when I came to…" She looked up, Alisaie's bright blue eyes intense upon her. "He became my mentor. I thought I saved his life." She rushed the last out so fast that a puff of laughter blew past her ear, tickling the fine hair lining it.
"You thought?"
"He… didn't make it. Not exactly. Not like… not like he should have."
"Kit," Alisaie said with great care, balancing all she'd learned in the past minutes with her desire to be Kit's most steadfast friend. "What did you do?"
Yes, Kit. What did you do?
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#KitHareington | #BFics
