Chapter Text
“You need me,” the voice whispers in her ear. “Deny it all you want, whenever you swing that sword of yours, whenever you bring down your blade to spill blood, you only remain standing because I am here to hold you up.”
Rhea tries her best not to listen as she twists said weapon, both hands gripping on with all her might as she buries it deeper into the creature before her, watching it spasm and silver until it finally dies.
“Be quiet,” she murmurs, exhaustion in her voice, but it is useless. It always is.
“Serve… Save… Slave… Slay… you are brimming with regrets,” the familiar voice continues. “If you’d only let me, I could free you of them all.”
“And then what?” Rhea hisses back. “You take over; we do things your way and become what exactly?”
Most of the time, she manages just fine to ignore the insistent nattering in her ear, but her bones feel heavy with exhaustion, and the numerous cuts she had sustained even through her armor sting and drag her bruised body into even more pain.
“Whole, of course,” Fray mutters. “To help others, you must first help yourself.”
Rhea has to close her eyes for a moment to take a deep breath and keep herself from swaying as a bout of dizziness rushes through her. She knows she has lost a significant amount of blood. She needs to get back to the Crystarium, back to a healer. As the dizziness passes, she pulls her weapon out of the dead sineater and shoulders it, slowly forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other. Her armored boots drag over the soft ground, purple leaves and petals whirling up around black with every step she takes.
“Be more selfish, you mean,” she murmurs, her voice barely a whisper on the air, but it takes but a thought for Fray to hear her, after all.
“Is it selfish to want to be fully yourself?” Fray asks, voice sounding treacherously innocent. “After all, one cannot foster understanding without even knowing oneself!”
“I know myself just fine, thank you,” Rhea snaps as she pauses her steps for a moment, having to catch her breath. A trail of blood drips from the joint of her armor, reminding her not to linger for too long, but not too far in front of her, the watchtowers outside the Crystarium are already in sight.
“Liar,” Fray spats. “You have so many questions… And you know just as well there is someone who might be able to answer them. If you but dare to ask.”
Rhea knows precisely just what person Fray means. Who has kept being on her mind, despite her trying her best to ignore him.
“Absolutely not,” Rhea murmurs. “I’ve clearly spent way too much time around Emet-Selch already; you are beginning to sound like him!”
“Me?”
Fray laughs wholeheartedly, the sound ringing almost painfully through Rhea’s head.
“Have you forgotten who I am?” Then, with a snide undertone, she adds, “If I sound like him, then maybe it is because that’s what you want to hear, my dear .”
When Rhea flinches at those words, Fray’s voice turns a little softer.
“Have you considered that maybe he has something to teach you? Maybe even has the one or other valid point?”
Rhea would laugh at the situation’s absurdity if it weren’t underlined with so much despair. Of course, she had. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be out here, in the middle of Lakeland, arguing with herself. But that trail of thought could only lead to ruin. If there is one thing she knows, it is that: The day she would consider the Ascian to be right would be the day she would be truly, irredeemably lost.