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You Walk Away

Summary:

Fray is right, of course. Fray has always been right.

Chapter 1: Prologue - Our Path

Chapter Text

Esselte elects to take a room at the Forgotten Knight that evening, rather than make her way up to the Fortemps manor. She would have been welcomed there, she knows, but she's done a lot of traveling and talking and fulfilling obligations over the past fortnight, and truthfully she needs to take a night for herself. So the tavern it is, instead.

The sun set bells ago, and a heavy snowstorm has set in since then, but the thick triple-glazed window keeps the room warm and mutes the noise of the storm down to a distant, low thrum. The glazing can hardly do anything about the way the storm blocks out the moonlight, however, so the low fire in the hearth is the only light in the room. Shadows have taken up residence in the room's corners, shifting with the flickering of the firelight.

Esselte crawls into bed, pulls the thick blankets up over her head, and lets her mind go blank. No obligations tonight. No crises to worry about, no burden of duty to set aside for a time. Just her, and the storm, and the darkness.

"You offered, once," she says quietly. "You reminded me that there are lands where nobody knows who we are. That if it ever became too much, that we could always just… renounce everything and leave it all behind. The Scions. The Alliance. Even Hydaelyn. Did you ever-"

She frowns, unsure how to phrase her question. The darkness in the room waits patiently for her to sort out her thoughts.

"'Well, it was thirteen at the time…'" she quotes, in a passable mimicry of Hythlodaeus' voice. "Do you think Azem did that? Faced with the Convocation and their monstrous stopgap measure on the one hand, and Venat's decimation on the other, she instead… did neither. And died in the process, evidently. Died alone, but walking free."

She hears a reply in voice that she knows all too well. She doesn't need to look out from under the blankets to know who it is. "I don't know any more about the details than you do," answers Fray in her low, rough voice. "But you're right, it does match the pattern. I imagine she would have done what she could, right up to her breaking point – like you tend to do, even still."

Esselte smiles and tilts her head, acknowledging the point. "I had a thought. We've got more practice with the Echo now than we did when you were first training me. And you've always been good at… showing me what we want to see. So I was thinking: it's been a while since we had ourselves a communion, hasn't it? And maybe, if you made a guess as to how it went for Azem at the end, we could watch it play out with the Echo?"

Fray snorts an undignified laugh. "Ah, Esselte. Your plans only ever get more reckless, don't they?" She laughs again, thoroughly amused. "Though of course, that's one of the reasons I love you. Let's try it, shall we?"

There is a shuffling of the blankets, shifting of weight on the bed until she's comfortable. "Well then. Close your eyes and hold out your hand. Breathe deep through your nose – let the air fill your lungs, then let it pass from your lips. Slower, slower. Listen to your heart. Listen to my voice." There's a pause, then another snort of laughter from Fray. "...Share my feelings. Know my thoughts."

She slips into the abyss of imagined memory.