Clover

“Stay.” He doesn’t know who is more surprised at the plea, the ghostly form or Clover himself.

“Excuse me?” The warrior turns around, facing Clover once more, confusion plain in his furrowed brow. It’s all Clover can do to keep from reaching out to smooth it.

“I- Please. Just. Just for a little while.” He’s wringing his hands, a habit he’d never quite managed to break no matter how many times he’d been scolded for it. He hears the desperation in his own voice, ragged in a way he had rarely experienced. He swallows heavily, voice nearly a whisper as he continues, though no less certain in its request. “I can’t bear the thought of you leaving.”

It’s true. Every time Ardbert goes it feels like a part of himself is being ripped from his very soul, an ache that consumes him in a way that has brought him to his knees each and every time. He feels weak, pathetic in a way he’s never experienced, longing for something he can’t even name, nevermind ask for. He’s thought about asking the Exarch, seeing if the man might know something but he can’t bring himself to share this, the only secret, the only thing he has to call his very own. He knows it’s selfish, knows it could be world-endingly important, but for now, just for now, he wants this for himself. Wants Ardbert for himself. 

It isn’t like he feels with Kelta or Aymeric, and by the twelve he misses Aymeric’s comforting presence, the way the man always seems to know just what to do and say to reassure him. This is something different, not love in a way he’s ever experienced but it’s something and it’s consuming him, occupying his every thought.

He knows Kelta is aware something is wrong, even if he doesn’t press. Clover thinks about telling him. He’s almost done it so many times, but he can never get the words right. Can’t get them out at all. Not when Kelta looked like he’d been struck by an arrow the first time he had seen the self-proclaimed Warrior of Darkness on the battlefield. Clover had asked back then, concerned but all Kelta had given him was a tired look and a quiet murmur about having thought he was someone else.

“All right then,” the man shuffles, eyes boring into Clover’s with a burning curiosity. “Now what?”

A breath Clover didn’t realize he’d been holding escapes his chest in a rush and it’s all he can do to keep his knees from buckling with the sheer relief that he wasn’t alone. That Ardbert had, somehow, heeded his request.

“I- I’m not. I don’t know. I didn’t think-” He’s stuttering, unable to answer the question when he’d had no plan, hadn’t even known he’d ask.

“Well Warrior of Darkness,” there’s a wry smile on his face at the title “Lightwardens and ascians and neither of us bat an eye, but expect us to hold a conversation and we falter.”

Clover laughs, harder than the comment perhaps deserves, but this, this is what he wants, what he’s craved since the first moment Ardbert’s phantom form had appeared to him. He understands. He knows exactly what this burden is because it was his too. Blessed by the light and burdened by its mantle and grieving loss after loss because of the title they’d been demanded to bear.

“If only they hadn’t twisted us into conflict with one another,” he murmurs. “What a team we could have been.”

He reaches out for a hand he’s not sure he’ll be able to touch, but wants so desperately to take. Ardbert looks at him, pausing for a moment before hesitantly reaching back, gasping when their fingers meet. It isn’t quite like touching anyone else, the point of contact vibrates in a way that is both intensely familiar and wholly wrong and before either of them can process who initiates it they’re wrapped in each others’ arms. They stand there, wrapped tightly around one another until they can no longer tell which parts belong to whom simply taking comfort in the act.

“It’s been so, so long,” Ardbert chokes out, and it isn’t until that moment that Clover realizes that the other man is equally unable to hold back tears. He nuzzles his face into the hume’s neck and rests it there in the crook between skin and armor and tries not to notice that there’s a stark absence of scent from the ghostly presence.

“I’ve got you.” Clover’s voice is clear in this at least. “I’ve got you.”