K'ile Tia had learned too well how to pass nights and days like these. The strange, affectionate equilibrium he'd struck with K'luha hung like a polished boulder balanced on a pedestal in the center of the room. Elsewhere another pedestal roamed alone, out of sight, but K'ile could almost hear the creaking weight of the hold he and K'piru exerted on one another. The pillar he'd carved to hold his love for his sister was made of cracked ice, and the blistering heat of Dalamud had been searing away at it for five hears. The Tia had tried to dance with that fire, but even with all five soulstones on his wrist, he'd failed to control it. Hellfire poured from his fingertips, it seemed, and the pillar weakened.
He should've just left those boulders in the sand, unpolished. Now their weight loomed.
K'piru hadn't returned to her inn room. Not in the minutes he'd expected nor in the hours that he'd hoped, and as he began to predict the coming of dawn he sat staring at K'luha's broken body as though he were chained to it. Bindings wrapped his heart and throat, squeezing each a little more minute by minute. He felt cold even as his body sweat to try and compensate for the heat in the room.
*
It was both difficult and easy to sleep. She was too tired not to sleep, and yet concern for K'ile kept her awake. She was less concerned for K'piru, as the woman had seemed to make her hold on life in the city fairy well since leaving five years ago. She would come back... she had her things here. Important things. Even if it took a long time, K'luha was sure that K'piru would come back.Â
And the reassurance to herself helped her sleep. Although her dreams were plagued with the backs of her family members and K'ailia's cruel words. She tried not to believe that she was the things K'ailia called her. She tried not to believe her own daughter disregarded her like so much dirt. But to her, it was pretty clear that she did. Did K'ailia really think that K'luha should just be okay with it all?Â
The thoughts and half-lucid dreams of Luha made her blink away, startled when she realized something.Â
"My linkpearl..." Luha mumbled, grasping for the necklace. It was gone. She must have left it in the other room before she ran. Luha frowned and looked over towards K'ile's form. She could almost see his body shaking and sweating with fear. "Not yet...?"
With a blink, K'ile Tia's gaze snapped from K'luha's tail to her face. He rolled his neck to loosen his muscles, resetting his posture. The slight movement stirred nausea in his stomach, but he ignored it as much as he could and it settled within moments. He shrugged at K'luha and said, "Not quite yet. Something must've come up. She's a..." he searched for the words. "I don't know. She works with money. Ul'dahns worship money, right?"
"An... accountant?" Luha offered. She'd heard the word before. She had hired one before as well, but they usually fucked her over. Metaphorically speaking of course. "And they do. I'm sure she'll be back." K'luha breathed out slowly, glancing up to the ceiling. "Could you check the front desk? I left my linkpearl in the room I was in before I..." K'luha trailed off and frowned. "Anyway, I left it behind. Maybe they have it at the front. Maybe you'll see her walking in if you check. You don't have to. Just... I do want to see if my linkpearl's still around." K'luha frowned quietly, still grasping for it at her neck but grapsing only at her skin.
"I can check on your pearl," he said, though his very first thought was to hope the thing had been lost permanently. Though that would leave K'ailia with a direct, unmoderated line to Tahj. Like a demon corrupting the girl in secret.
With that in mind, he said, "Yeah, we'll find it. No problem," as he stood and moved towards the door. "There anything else you need?"
Something else... K'luha faintly realized that she was above the bed's blankets and the lack of movement had her utterly freezing. Hadn't Piru gone to ask for more blankets and such? Maybe that was the problem...
"Didn't Piru go to ask for blankets...? Well... maybe she left a message with the front desk. See if you can't get an extra blanket. But wait... my pocket... ah... that's bad." K'luha realized she had left all her gil in that room as well. All her things were in that room... "Better idea. Go check the room. I had paid for it for a few days so maybe they left my things in there. And if not, see if you can't manage to get anything from the front desk. If they took all my gil, they could at least not charge us for having extra people in this room." Luha frowned faintly, also finally half realizing that Piru had pulled down to expose her hip injury... but that she was pretty much in her underwear which Piru had pulled half off. Awkward. Ah well. At least everyone was too tense to realize it.
This was starting to sound a bit like a chore. K'ile grimaced and stretched. Sitting on the floor all night had not been kind to his body, and there was an ache radiating downward from the base of his tail. "Alright, alright. I'll find your stuff. I'll be right back, and unlike some people, I'll actually come back."
He stepped out of the room in no great hurry, but closed the foor firmly behind him. His senses, once free of the intimate scents of K'luha and K'piru, were assaulted with the stink of Ul'dah. He shook his head against it and pulled on one ear, lingering for a moment, and then walked down the hallway, taking the turn towards K'luha's room.
What splintered wood had lay in the hallway had been cleared and a piece of rope hastily strung across the entryway, a dangling sign that read "No entry". For once, something simple enough that he could actually read it. And ignore it.
K'ile flicked the sign and fire flickered to life on either side, the soulstones on his bracelet glowing dimly for a moment. He pulled on the weakened rope and it snapped wasily, the fire snuffed as it fell away. He stepped over the pile of wood immediately inside of the room and perused what had been K'luha's accomadation until... What, K'ailia had attacked her? He was still had no idea what had actually transpired.
When the Tia returned to K'piru's inn room a few minutes later, he carried a multitude of items. In one hand were a blanket and pillow, pulled conveniently from the bed of the broken room, and in the other was a satchel (presumably K'luha's) into which he'd stuffed everything that he found that might belong to the woman. Her gil was included. If the work-people at this inn weren't so lazy, they might've robbed her, but they apparently hadn't given the room more than a few seconds' consideration.
K'luha felt bad for asking so much of K'ile... but maybe the task would keep his mind pre-occupied from K'piru's delayed return. She would come back... she would. Again, K'luha had to reassure herself that Piru would come back. Then again...
The silence in the now empty room was somewhat deafening. Luha laid still and bit her bottom lip, her ands carefully grabbing her clothing and readjusting it for comfort. She straightened out her pantlettes and pulled up on her camise. Despite being cold, it simply felt more comfortable to have less shirt-like things covering her at the moment.Â
In the rest of the ensuing silence, K'luha tried not to think about K'ailia's cruelty. She tried not to think of K'ailia at all. Maybe if she could just calm down, she could accept it. Maybe... maybe if they would allow tribe members to come and go more freely... maybe then K'ailia wouldn't have to be exiled. She could be free to be herself, and then she could still have her family. Truely, it was her own self-imposed exile and rejection of her family that most bothered Luha. If she could be brought back, even if she wasn't in person then... then maybe Luha could accept that. It would be easier for her if things were like that.Â
Sometime between thinking and K'ile's return she fell asleep. The door's opening startled her awake again and she partially jolted to sit up, only to inhaled sharply and lay back down. "Owowowowowowow..."
"Luha!" K'ile snapped when he heard her, half-expecting the woman to have decided she could do laps around the room and had her leg break completely off her body when that proved untrue. Seeing the woman still on the bed, K'ile huffed anyway, "Can you really not just stay still?"
"N-no I-ow- just was-ow- startled when the -ow- door opened-ow." K'luha hissed and rubbed gingerly at her hip. She was too used to sitting up whenever K'ile walked in a room. She was really going to have to learn to lie still around him.
Tossing the satchel off to one side, K'ile walked over to the bed and looked down on K'luha, "Maybe Piru has some kind of paralysis potion we can use on you for a month or two." He smirked and dropped the pillow on her face.
Luha frowned, hissing taking deep breaths to try and stave off some of the pain. A paralysis potion? No way. She wasn't going to be paralyzed for however long this took to heal. She reached up and took the pillow off her face before pouting at K'ile. "No way. I'm just hoping it heals well enough to walk at this point."
"This'll be a good experience for you," K'ile said with a chuckle, dropping the blanket on K'luha's face. "You can only walk once you learn how to not walk for a while."
"This is horrific." K'luha pouted in return, grabbing the blanket he had put on her face and covering herself with it as much as possible. Which wasn't terribly well but better than before. "I can't move. How will I use the bathroom? How will I clean up? How can I do anything besides waste resources at the tribe?" She whined loudly and covered her face with the blanket. "Damnit."
"It's not that bad, Luha," K'ile said, sitting down next to K'luha on the bed and then shifting on a whim to lay next to her, though he was half-off the bed in order to fit. "You're not going to be completely immobile for a day or two, I bet, and once the feast we bought gets to the tribe nobody's going to complain about you not being able to contribute."
K'luha tried to move over a bit to let K'ile lay down, but swiftly gave up when it hurt. Instead she settled for dropping her arm on his chest and frowning at the ceiling.Â
"Problem. The Brass Blades are holding our feast shipments in Ul'dah here you know. They sent me a letter in Drybone. We'll have to try and argue our food out."
"What!" K'ile started, half sitting up, "That's bullshit! It's just FOOD!"
K'luha's arm slid down to lay across his lap and she frowned over at him. "I know that. But now we've got to argue about it with the Brass Blades."
Remaining rigid for a moment, his eyes flicking around in confusion for a time, K'ile slowly realized it wasn't something he needed to jump up and see to immediately. He eased back and lay his hand over K'luha's then readjusted himself so he was laying on his side and facing her. "The tribe's hungry. They need that food. Brass is flimsy. Can we just break them and get the food back?"
"We could just buy new food." K'luha suggested, glancing back over to K'ile. While she wouldn't mind just breaking in and stealing their food back... "If we steal back from them, we'll be in trouble. We won't be able to come here ever again. And if we fail, they'll lock us in metal cages until we rot."
"I don't understand," he admitted, "How can Ul'dah just take food we bought. That's our gil. They worship gil!"
"Something about an investigation...?" K'luha pouted and patted his chest lightly. "I don't know... I hardly understand it myself."
He let his head drop and lay next to K'luha's, Â muttering sadly, "I need that feast so I can be Nunh for you."
"We'll get it back K'ile..." K'luha frowned, disliking the sound of him being sad. She reached over to take his hand and shook it lightly. "We'll get it. Or we'll get a new one. We'll figure it out. Okay?"
Exhaling a sigh, K'ile breathed, "...Okay, Luha." He lay very still. His tail lifted and fell a single time.
Luha bit her bottom lip and just watched him for a few moments. Did he really believe her? She thought so and yet... Luha reached up with a hand and pressed it softly to his cheek, turning his head towards her. She didn't say anything, but just looked at him, eyes shimmering with a deep and burning compassion. It was something she always had burning in her eyes when people really looked at them.
The Tia blinked his blue eyes, his bright hair partially obscuring one of them. His hands lay limply against the covers that K'luha had wrapped herself in, his ears pitched back on his head in a sign of displeasure. His gaze, however, appeared contemplative, as he looked very closely at the curve of K'luha's nose, the circle of her cheeks, the two colors of her eyes.
K'luha left her eyes lingering on K'ile's. They were stunning really. It was... probably her favorite feature about him. Those eyes. They burned so intensely that the fire was a brilliant blue. She felt like she could be satisfied just staring at them for a while, but her hands moved on their own, pushing the blanket to cover K'ile as well as herself. At least he didn't have to be cold if he was hanging half-off the bed.
Smiling at the gesture, K'ile moved to fascilitate it. He reached one hand over K'luha's body and took holdy of her shoulder, pulling himself against her and pushing his forehead into her hair.
K'luha smiled a bit despite herself and let out a soft breath of air. It was natural, being like this. She didn't feel like she needed more even. With K'yohko, no matter how close she was she had always needed more from him. The things she needed, he simply couldn't give her to. But it felt so much better with K'ile. She didn't feel like she constantly had to have his body. Just this the way it was, she was happy.
***
Her feet ached. Antimony had noticed this well before she noticed night had fallen over Ul’dah, but it didn’t stop her motion. Her legs moved mindlessly, carrying her down an alley, around a corner, into another street, and onward through the circular maze of the city. She passed the Quicksand twice, but both times she could not bring her legs to stop or her feet to carry her back up those steps. Instead she continued to walk, paper-wrapped package held close to her chest and head bowed so that much of her view of the city was reduced to dirty, cobbled streets and a multitude of foreign feet. Sand and fire and loss dogged every step, voices and words she hadn’t thought of in years echoing in her skull. Coward. Selfish. They’re gone. I couldn’t save them. You couldn’t save them.
Her pace quickened despite the pain in her feet that had begun to lace up into her shins, but there was no escape from any of it in a city that took her in nothing but circles. For not the first time, her thoughts flitted to the parcel in her arms, to snow and cold and a warm invitation. No one would come looking for her in Coerthas. She had heard it was as isolated as anything could possibly be. Even if she didn’t find Mitari there to greet her, perhaps the cold could swallow the memories better than ocean and books.
But she had told K’ailia…
Walking became significantly more difficult around the time she also noticed the shadows along the buildings shifting and gaining a grey-blue hue. Her head felt impossibly heavy, and on more than one occasion she found herself on a side street with no memory of the steps that had taken her there. But there was a blessing in this exhaustion: her thoughts and memories, the pain and loss, the sharp ache of guilt and the creeping illness that churned her gut and flung harsh, vindictive words, had fallen back, buried under the weight of a tired mind.
One foot caught on an uneven stone then, sending her body lurching forward and the parcel flying from her arms to skid across the ground. At such an early morning, the street she had wandered into was largely empty, so no eyes turned to watch her tumble. She lay numbly on the stones for several minutes before grimacing at the needles lancing up her legs and the stinging in palms of her hands where she’d tried to catch her fall, and pulled herself to her knees. She blinked at an unbidden wetness in her eyes – a childish, instinctive reaction – and a moment later managed to stagger to her feet and scoop up Mitari’s gift.
When nothing but a keen awareness of her exhaustion greeted her mind, Antimony let out a long breath. She could finally return.
***
How she found her way back to the Quicksand, Antimony wasn’t certain, but the innkeep gave her an odd look when she walked past. The back halls passed in a blur, and when she pushed open the door to her inn room and stepped inside, she found herself blinking dumbly at K’luha and K’ile on her bed as though she’d forgotten they would even be there.
When the door opened, K'ile rolled out of the bed in a reaction so sudden one would think he was about to be attacked. But it was just K'piru. Just K'piru. It was the last and most important person he'd ever expected to see walking through a door, barring his dead brother, and every sense he had, every drop of his attention, focused immediately on the woman.
K'luha blinked as K'ile semi violently ripped himself away and off the bed. She was worried for a moment he'd gone and hurt himself, but then she realized the door was open. She carefully propped herself up lightly to note K'piru at the door and smiled. So she had come back after all. Thank goodness...Â
Luha dropped herself back down on the bed and decided she'd done enough interfering for the time being. Sleep would suit her fine for now.
Antimony looked between the two for several seconds before letting the door drift shut behind her. She could feel an echo of those gut-wrenching pains from before, but they were blissfully muted by the deep aching in her feet and the stinging in her hands. She wondered if she could just fall asleep standing and murmured a faint, "Hello," in greeting.
"K'piru," K'ile darted forward to the woman, putting one hand on each of the woman's shoulders and saying, "Are you alright? You look exhausted! You're covered in dirt."
Her ears shifted back when K'ile approached suddenly, the deep, familial scent he brought with him invading her senses. To distract herself, she adjusted her grip on the parcel in her arms and leaned to one side as though to move around him. "I... needed some air," she said by way of explanation, keeping her eyes averted.
Feeling as though he'd been struck, K'ile pulled back his hands and stepped away from K'piru, trying not to notice the onrush of nausea. "I understand." He looked around the room. "How were you planning to...?"
She stood still for a moment after he stepped back, as though unsure what to do with the space given. The weight in her arms brought out sluggish action after a time, however, and she moved to deposit the parcel on as empty a place as one could find upon nearby table. The air displaced by its arrival pushed at a precarious stack of papers, sending them scattering to the floor. A thin sound caught in the back of her throat at the sight, and she half bent as though to chase after them but stopped about halfway through the action.
K'ile was all too eager to pick up the pages on K'piru's behalf. "I've got it, don't worry. You should rest. It's fine. I've got it." His teal flicked back and forth behind him.
If K'ile hadn't said it earlier, K'luha wouldn't have believed that he loved her. But she took deep breaths and tried not to listen in on private conversations and sleep instead.
Rest. Not with either of them here, not when she was breathing their scents and hearing their subtle sounds, and each moment was a struggle not to fall apart. If she slept now, the dreams that would haunt her would not allow for rest. Instead she murmured, "It is morning now." She watched his hands on the papers, almost warned him to be wary of reading them as they were private documents, but that life seemed so far removed from his existence that it hardly seemed necessary.
At least, it had once been far removed.
She found herself reaching out to still his hands with one of her own while the other picked up the remaining pages quietly. "I'm sorry," she sighed and leaned against the table when she straightened.
It was pretty close to impossible to miss K'piru's state of weariness. Even her protests were weak. "You should sleep," he said. "If I'm bothering you I'll leave."
The papers in her hand struck the table with surprising force, sending a short ripple through the rest of the disorganized pile, and Antimony blinked at them for several seconds, wondering who had thrown them down.
Oh.
"You will stay with K'luha," she said simply and forced her attention to the parcel she'd brought in, fingers moving to toy with the knot of twine holding its wrapping together.
K'ile stood, took a deep breath, and frowned. He wished he had even a slight bit of understanding as to what the inside of K'piru's head was like. Maybe then he'd have a clue as to what she was getting mad about.
"I have things to do anyway," K'ile said. "Apparently someone took some stuff we bought for some reason, and with Luha resting, it's up to me to find it and figure out what the Ul'dahns want with it."
The knot came undone with minimal effort, and the paper followed, crinkling under her hands until fur and leather and red and purple cloth were revealed. She tried to feel grateful, but instead a strange, nervous guilt settled on her shoulders and dragged her tail down to her legs. K'ile seeing the gift made her want to hide in shame, as though it would tell him every horrible thing she had thought while walking Ul'dah's streets, every act she had contemplated that it had stood testament to.
Where had the protection of her exhaustion gone?
Her fingers dug into the fur collar of the coat, and she finally processed K'ile's own words. "Took?" She blinked slowly, frowned. "Who...?"
"Uhm," He looked over towards K'luha, who seemed to be trying to sleep, and then back to K'piru. "Brass swords?" he guessed, mostly sure he'd gotten the words right even if he didn't understand what they meant.
"Brass Blades." Luha corrected.
“The Blades," Antimony echoed and then sighed. "Customs. Or..." The thought that her... that K'ile and K'luha had run into the type of individuals she was investigating made her uneasy. Yet it was likely. This was a problem, however, and Antimony latched onto it as a ready distraction. "Did they give you a contact to speak with to reacquire the goods?" Lifting the folded coat from the paper then, Antimony froze and paled at something beneath it before dropping the item hastily back in place.
Luha propped herself up again and waved  a hand at K'ile before whistling. "Skirt pocket. On the bottom. Yellow paper."
"Lay down," Antimony said firmly, without looking fully at K'luha.
K'ile stepped back and said, "Okay, you two know what's going on. That's good." He paced over towards Luha and spoke more or less at the same time K'piru did to say, "Lay down."
Letting out a small sigh, still looking shaken from whatever she'd seen in the package, Antimony continued quietly, "If they did, it is good. Documentation means... it will be harder for them to justify losing it."
K'luha sat up a bit further out of spite and reached over to try and grab her skirt.
K'ile saw this coming and pushed K'luha back down into the bed, "We talked about this. You were about one inch away from adding on another day of not being able to move at all." He paused. "Probably."
K'luha flopped back without much effort and snapped her fingers at him before pointing at her skirt.
Frowning down at Luha, K'ile snapped back at her buit grabbed her skirt anyway, searching the pockets for...
Swallowing confusion and an unhealthy degree of anxiety and guilt, Antimony stepped up alongside K'ile and made to take the skirt from him. "It will be a notice of search and siezure, likely marked with the local Blade seal," she muttered and removed a folded sheet of paper from one pocket. When opened, the page displayed a declaration of suspicion of unlicensed cargo shipment. Antimony blinked at it and tried to recall if any such regulation existed, but her knowledge of Ul'dahn laws was rather limited to the scope of her own work.
Letting the skirt get pulled from his fingers, K'ile protested dumbly, "Search and seizure? But we bought it. What is wrong with Ul'dah that they make us buy things and then just take them?"
Pursing her lips, Antimony examined the paper more, her eyes catching on a familiar name that brought a frown even further down her brow. "They monitor the goods going in and out of their lands for legal reasons," she explained distractedly and then sighed. "... I... may be able to fix this."
"That's..." K'ile let his hands fall to his sides and grimaced. "You don't need to. Just tell me where to look and I'll find it."
"It's not that quite so simple," Antimony spoke quietly, eyes down on the paper. "Suspicious shipment... if your... ah, food?" She blinked in confusion and then continued, "If it still exists in Ul'dah, you will need to clear it with the Blades. I... know the woman involved."
"The woman involved?" Luha questioned faintly, against slightly propping herself up so she could at least see Piru properly.
K'ile almost absent-mindedly pushed K'luha back down, having no input on the situation, too confused to understand it completely.
"Stahp that," Luha grumbled, pushing his hand off her and trying to prop herself up again. "It doesn't hurt. It's only a little bit."
K'ile stubbornly pushed Luha back onto the bed, "No. You don't even understand what 'stay still' means."
"Miss Loughree. She is currently under... ah. It..." Antimony hesitated, worried the paper in her hands and flicked her eyes briefly towards the others before turning away once more. "Suffice to say, I'm certain I can resolve this."
"I don't doubt it," K'ile Tia responded. "I just don't like that I seem to have brought you so many problems."
Ears drooping, Antimony managed only a faint, "It is no trouble."
"It's not about causeing trouble or not..." K'ile muttered, looking to K'luha for help.
K'luha looked back to K'ile and sighed. "We... could really use her help though K'ile. I don't know how to wade through these legal things..."
"I will resolve this for you," Antimony repeated lowly. The hand that held the notice dropped to her side while her other moved to rub at one temple.
K'ile pulled on one ear in frustration and sat down on the bed next to K'luha, looking suddenly exhausted. With K'piru's return rendered and her inserting herself forcefully into K'ile's problems, he found the obsessive worry that he'd had over her... not gone, but distant. As if he had placed it in the hands of someone he could trust for a short time.
With that weight off his shoulders, his tiredness fell on him like the rush of a sandstorm, and sagged under his own weight comfortably. He'd eaten very little and slept very little in his eagerness to get to K'piru, in his worry since then.
"Thank you... K'piru." K'luha called, a small smile peeking out towards her aunt. Maybe things could be resolved finally. Maybe... everything could be okay again. Although, that sense quickly faded at K'ile sagged down and dropped onto the bed next to her.Â
She carefully put a hand to his back and let her fingers soothingly run along his spine.Â
"Hey, everyone needs some rest and food. Piru, I've got enough gil in my purse to cover a second room if you'd like some proper rest." Luha offered, staying flat on the bed this time.
"There's no need." As she spoke, she moved back to the table and, after a moment, added uneasily, "I will need you with me to testify, K'ile."
"Alright, I am stupid, but my turn to tell you morons something. Everyone sleeps and eats first before we do another damn thing." K'luha interjected loudly.
His head popped up, ears standing straight up, when K'piru said she needed something from him. "What? Uh. Alright! I can do that!" His ears shifted to point at K'luha, and in a moment's time his tone shifted down, "That's true. You really need to take care of yourself more than you need to take care of us."
"She is not in a shape to move, nor do I wish to sleep at this time," Antimony murmured, distractedly smoothing out the creases in the notice.
***
A dark haired, lankey Elezen approached the Quicksand's receptionist. She exchanged a series of words with the man, causing him to frown considerably. He shook his head, causing the woman to set her hand down heavily on the counter. She pulled out papers from her dust covered satchel pushing them over the surface.Â
After a few minutes, where the man ducked away from his post, he returned, telling her a room number. The woman nodded her head, tucking the neatly folded papers away into her satchel, and walked up the Inn's stairs.
Walking with long, sure strides down the hallway, Illira Carceri scanned the room numbers listed on the doorway, eventually stopping at one at the end of the tunnel, near a stairwell. She looked it over, before planting her feet down and brushing off a few traces of sand from her red linen shirt.
She took a breath before knocking firmly on the door.
***
Sighing heavily, K'ile gestured over his shoulder, "Piru, when it's Luha telling you that you need to take a break, that's pretty-" He stopped suddenly at the knock on the door, turning to look at the doorknob as though it had been trying to say something to him.
"You don't have to sleep now, just before you go out and try to deal with the Brass Blades." Luha continued after the initial silence of the door knocking. She glared at the door a little bit, but turned her gaze back to Piru after a second.
Antimony looked up sharply at the knock, her ears shifting back further. "Ulanan...?" She muttered under her breath and gave an uneasy look over her shoulder in K'ile and K'luha's general direction. How would she explain to her friend what she had...
She hesitated and as a result, took significantly longer to answer the door than was likely polite. In the end, however, her unwillingness to leave a friend hanging pushed her to action, and she moved to open the door. Her gaze shifted down automatically to greet her shorter companion but saw only a pair of long legs. She blinked at them dumbly for several seconds.
Illira stared down her long nose at the older Miqo'te in front of her. She pressed her lips together tightly, the very edges of them turned upwards slightly in an almost sardonic manner. "Were you going to leave me hanging forever Antimony? For someone normally so eager to leave a good impression. This is not the way. Especially after last time." She turned her head up, looking over Antimony's head. "Oh, but you have company. How rude of me to interrupt thusly on such an..." She drifted off, casting her steely eyes over the other woman stretched out on the bed, "… obviously personal moment."
It probably didn't help that K'ile wasn't wearing a shirt, which he never was, so he was ignorant of the implications of such as he stood from the bed and crossed his arms. He didn't know who the woman was, but he did not miss her tone.
"Ah...?" Antimony's eyes dragged up the legs and then widened as her features paled significantly, her ears pressing tight against her skull. "Miss... Miss Carceri...! What are you... That is, I--Oh..." She fell back a step from the door, looking faint with sudden realization. "Oh no."
K'luha grasped for K'ile's tail and quietly tried to make him sit down again. She too felt a little... intruded upon but, there was very little she could do.
"Oh no is right, Antimony. Have you been using company funds on such... what is this even? A late-in-life journey of self-discovery?" She shook her head, braids flapping. "I sent you messages for news, after I recieved none. And thusly have dragged myself back into this... sad pit." Her lips clenched tighter at the last thought, looking as if she wanted to spit viciously at the mere thought.
K'ile sat down next to K'luha, muttering to the woman, "I don't understand. Journies of discovery are good, right?"
"I think so..." K'luha whispered back, nervously petting K'ile's back. More to calm her own nerves than his at this point. She hated being quite so defenseless when someone seemed to be on the offensive.
Antimony's tail puffed up rather dramatically in distress. "Whaat?" She squeaked, coughed to try and clear her throat, and found her thoughts spinning. How could she have forgotten? How could she have possibly...! Of course, she knew how; every moment of every day in this city had seemed bent on splitting her attention until she just tore apart at the seams.
And it seemed Miss Carceri was here to finish the job.
"I promise you this is not--not what you are thinking it--I'm not... they are family!" She swayed a bit dizzily and looked up towards Illira, at a loss as to how to defend herself, knowing there really was no defense. Antimony wilted, bowing her head so low that her spine curved forward to join it. "The delay is inexcusable, I realize. I am deeply sorry," she managed weakly.
At K'piru's distress K'ile rose from the bed without consideration, moving towards her.
Illira lifted a brow, "Family? I apologize. But I do not believe that I have ever found myself in such a situation with my own."
K'luha frowned as K'ile walked away from her. Goddamn it. She hated this stupid broken hip.
"Though,†the elezen continued, “I'm sure that you'll say it’s not what it seems. And that would be mistaking my curiosity for care. Trust me. It’s not."
Antimony winced at Illira's words. "It is not... ah, I was only assisting... she is injured!" She tried rather helplessly to explain, gesturing behind her towards K'luha. "Please, you did not--there was no need for you to have traveled so far to... I am very sorry!"
K'ile inserted himself between K'piru and the newcomer, "Hey! For your information the woman over there was seriously injued and possibly dying. I don't know what family you come from that doesn't drop everything for that, but you'r not making yourself look good, miss... Ul'dah person."
Something spasmed in Antimony's expression as K'ile thrust himself into the situation and chastised Illira. Her hands flew up as though to stop him but froze mid-air.
Illira tucks her head in further to take in the shirtless man that has thrust himself between herself and her degenerate employee. "I rather think this is not your business, Mr... ladies-man."
"Please!" Antimony burst out, hands still hovering uselessly in the air. "Just... allow me to explain, you must allow me to explain! I am simply helping them recover--recover her health and, aah, I was going to look into a lost shipment but only on off time and I wouldn't dream of using company funds on any of this, I swear I have not, I've been very careful, but so much has been going on since my report to you and I was nearly arrested but not really and one of the clients is targeted for assassination but I promise to you I was making very solid progress up until this point, I've only been distracted and--" She ran well out of breath at this point and gasped for air before squeaking out with an aimless gesture towards the table, "See??"
The table, for inquiring minds, was covered in a mess of papers, one headless doll, and a folded winter coat just unwrapped from a mail package.
Not backing down a single millimeter, K'ile leaned forward to focus his glare on Illira's chin, "Lots of big words, but she sounds respectful. You better be, too."
K'luha just laid still quietly and cursed everything for it being a broken hip.
Illira narrowed her eyes at the table, ignoring the man below her. "It has been three weeks since your last report. If you were having such trouble you should have reported as such and requested some back-up or for another to take over. As it is, you have wasted valuable company time. Time is money, Antimony. You should well know that. As it is... your... collection on appears to be a mess worthy of D'hein's own desk."
K'ile hummed, and looked over his shoulder to gauge the woman's reaction, unable to discern on his own if the Elezen's words counted as rude or not.
"Aah," a faint, worried sound escaped Antimony's throat and she brought her hands together in front of her, digits shaking. The room spun and she spoke again in rapid fire: "I know. I understand. I do. I know. I promise you. I've tried to--I've found a--I... nngh--" Her words cut off suddenly as she stumbled to the side and caught herself on the table. She felt light-headed, her thoughts fuzzy as she murmured weakly, "There will be no more delays."
"I am here to help you, Antimony, if you need it. But I think that it’s too late to simply say, 'There will be no more delays.' It is not only yourself that is responsible in this instance, as I am responsible for you as your supervisor on this investigation." Illira shook her head again, before pressing her hand down on the man's shoulder, pushing him towards the inward swung door.
Standing solidly against the pushing hand, K'ile knocks the hand away, gives the woman a smirk, and then moves away of his own volition, back towards K'luha.
Sinking into the lone chair next to the table, Antimony held her head in her hands. "Too much," she whispered to herself, "This is far, far too..." She drew a shaky breath and peered up at Illira once more. "What do you wish me to do?"
Stepping into the room, Illira looked around closer, taking in fully the pair of Miqo'te by the bed, and the lone woman now hunched over her desk. "To do the job that you are being paid to do. It is early morning, and yet you languish in your room with your... family..." She motioned towards the bed. "I am here to help expedite the process as necessary. But I cannot do your job. If you need something not directly involving those under investigation I may lend my hand. But this has to make headway. I can practically smell D'hein's fowl breath on the nape of my neck."
"Of... of course," Antimony sighed, casting a strained look towards K'ile and K'luha without really focusing on them. Her ears and tail hung low, shamed, as she slowly returned her attention to Illira. "I... right away. I will get back to work immediately," she declared quietly.
K'ile lifted the satchel he'd earlier tossed on the floor up onto the bed and gave Illira a frown, "Nobody's languishing and K'piru is exhausted from her work already. She needs to rest."
"Oh? She's exhausted from her work is she? That’s funny. You know nothing of the matter except how to distract her. Such is obvious from her short, but already full history of such matters."
"No, she is correct," Antimony shook her head at K'ile's words. "I've... obligations that cannot be ignored. I... had not intended to ignore them." She grimaced, rubbed at her eyes behind her glasses where an itchy dryness had set in. K'ile and K'luha had not felt so distant now since that night in the desert, so long ago; the thought chilled her. "Immediately," she repeated. "I recall I'd found certain individuals I need to... I can go now. I apologize, you shouldn't feel the need to linger here." And as heavily as she had sat moments earlier, Antimony pushed to her feet.
Ignoring the Elezen woman, K'ile focused his attention on K'piru. "You have an obligation to yourself. How much real work are you going to get down without rest or food? You should know better than any of us."
"And why do you purport that she is so exhausted? It seems that you, yourself has had such a part to play in these matters. She is not in town to entertain and attend your needs..." Illira walked over to the bed where the undressed woman lay. "You both cannot stay here. As this is paid for with company funds, it is single occupancy company housing."
K'luha glanced over towards the satchel where her gil would be. Thankfully K'ile had sat it on the bed. She carefully reached forward and rummaged about it before picking up a small coin purse.Â
"I can reimburse you for the room." Luha offered, picking up the nessacery coinage from her purse.
Antimony straightened and made to protest, "I've already discussed it with the front desk - all... all additional fees are to be sent to my personal account! She cannot move with a broken hip."
K'ile shook his head at the woman, "She doesn't care. She's just being a bitch."
"K'ile..." Luha called, reaching with her other free hand and grabbing his tail. "Stop. Don't make it harder for... Antimony." The name sounded strange to Luha, but if that's what she was going called then Luha would respect that for the time being.
Casting her hooded gaze back onto Antimony, "Even so, those papers that you have on your... desk are confidential in nature. And as your... friend is so eager to point out, you need your rest. And you will not get that taking care of an -injured- woman. That is not your job. That is a medic’s. Which is where she should be, if she is really hurt. Not tucked away in a tiny inn room meant to hold one person. I highly doubt the inn would approve of such stretched room occupancy." Shaking her head, she addressed the man. "If you insist on calling my personage names, perhaps you should give me your own, so that I might return the favour someday, hmm?"
His tail straining against K'luha's grip a bit, K'ile thrust his finger at Illira's chest, "It's not a name. it's an observation. Name's K'ile Tia if you want, but I don't even want your name."
Antimony rather shrunk at Illira's none-too-friendly lecture and turned away from K'luha and K'ile. Her hands shook so she clasped them together in front of her. She felt a chasm forming between her and them, driven on by Illira, but could not find any means to protest it, was not even sure she should want to. Instead, she kept her eyes down, sensing bits of herself fraying horribly and helpless to prevent it, and said flatly, "I will have them moved. I apologize."
This wouldn't have all been such the problem if K'luha hadnt gone and... The injured woman sighed heavily. She just wanted to walk out of the damn room, but she didn't have the choice to do that anymore. Instead, she limply let go of K'ile's tail and hid her face away in the extra blanket. She really did not want to be in Ul'dah anymore.
Illira nodded her head, thick brows dipping inward slightly. She did not look away as she said, "That is the right course of action Antimony. I would suggest moving your Tia out as well. He does not seem to have been a good influence on you, even if he is family, I surmise that that he is not blood kin. At least I should hope not, especially given what I know of Seekers."
Placing himself directly in front of the Elezen, K'ile demanded, "What is wrong with you? Why is everyone in Ul'dah so crooked and greedy, just barging in and bullying and taking what they want? Dealing with everything sideways instead of straight on."
"K'ile, stop," Antimony uttered lowly, a faint strain of pleading in her voice in the way it shook, not looking up or towards him. "Don't... make this... I... can help you find a physician for K'luha. I'm sorry."
Illira brow furrowed heavily as she took in a heavy, steadying breath. Her jaw tight and squared, she said, "You've been out in the desert to long Tia. You obviously know nothing of work, much less Antimony's, or you would not be saying any such a thing. You think I like it here in Ul'dah? I am only back in the cesspit because my subordinate has neglected to even send a report in three weeks. I would not set foot back in this city if I did not have to, the very air within this place riles my blood, its corruption lies so deep. So do not speak with me about such matters. You will find none so forthright as me."
Looking to the side for one moment, the short Tia very suddenly and with no warning whatsoever subjected the Elezen to one of his better uppercuts, a punch that harkened back to that one time he beat K'yohko half to death for treating K'piru in a similar way. "How's that for forthright, bitch!?"
"K'ile, stop!" Antimony cried out uselessly, spinning around to close the distance between her and him and grab frantically at his hands.
Illira's head was knocked back, as K'ile's uppercut caught her chin. She stepped back, catching the blow that if given to a person his own size, would have likely knocked them on their ass. In reality though, the punch thrown onto the much taller woman wasn’t able to do deliver such a knockout.Â
She reached a hand upwards rubbing her jaw, as she moved her other foot back a step. "You should run back to your dunes little Tia. I know you mean well, defending what you believe to be Antimony's honor. But intention only takes you so far, assaulting me is neither the moral, the legal, nor the right course of action. I will forgive one such thing though as you are obviously so far gone to your baser instincts."
K'luha's head emerged again as K'ile went for the aggressive. Yes the woman was a bitch but... She watched nervously, internally furious that she literally could do nothing but lay there and watch it all happen. What was there to do? The only thing she could do was get out of the way as fast as possible and talk with Piru later. Â Luha looked towards Piru and mouthed something that would have been missed by the others. Hopefully, Piru saw her silent apologies.Â
Slowly, K'luha sat up and pulled the blanket around her form. Maybe she could catch K'ile's attention doing something stupid again. But either way, getting out of the way was her goal and a winning situation. Carefully, painfully, she moved herself towards the edge of the bed to maybe limp or hop out of the room.
K'ile wasn't precisely sure what all of those words the Elezen woman was using meant, but he knew her tone hadn't changed any. He would've hit her again if K'piru hadn't gone for his hands. He didn't want to be violent anywhere within arm's reach of K'piru, so his arms fell quickly and he pulled himself away from the Elezen, letting her blathering continue.
As he turned his face away, he could see K'luha moving, and he should've known she would. He pounced on the woman almost as fast as he'd struck the Elezen, grabbing Luha by one shoulder to stop her movement. He said sternly, "Luha cannot be moved. That is not an option. No cowardice, intentions or self-important vomitting can change that."
K'luha halted when she felt K'ile suddenly stop her with a strong hand on her shoulder. She just... didn't want to be a part of this Ul'dahn nonsense anymore. She wanted to go back home to Tahj and fuck everything else. But she didn't move again when K'ile stopped her, instead pulling the blaket further around her form and almost hiding in it.
Antimony fell back almost immediately when K'ile relented, twisting away once more to stare half-panicked at Illira. "He did not mean it, I--I assure you! Just... let me deal with them and I'll... they will not be a bother further!" She turned to the table and began to rather desperately try to sort through the papers there, searching.
Still rubbing her jaw, "Then please see to it. She does not have to move, but if that is the case, then you must relocate. Though I would highly suggest that she see a real healer, if it is as bad as you believe. You are an accountant. Not a medical or healing arts practioner Antimony. I should step outside for you to clean up your own mess now and arrange for my own unfortunate stay."
Closing her eyes, hands shaking so much that the papers in her hands rattled, Antimony nodded hastily. "Yes, I understand, of course. I'll... it won't take long, I assure you. Everything will be taken care of, and I'll--I'll get back to work."
K'ile pushed K'luha back down into a laying position, one hand on the woman's back to make sure the movement was easy and slow.
K'luha complied, laying back down slowly and continuing to avert her gaze and hide her face as subtly as possible.
Illira walked towards the door, opening it back up, "We will talk later this morning Antimony, in a less... raucous environment if you would. I would not want to be the reason that your Tia is arrested for assault."
K'ile observed somberly, "She just wants to be able to bully you without being called on it."
Swallowing thickly, Antimony could only nod once more to Illira's words. She straightened the papers in her hand a fourth time without thinking.
The elezen walks out of the room, closing the door behind her.
K'luha listened to the woman walk out of the room, but the tension in the room did not lighten as she left. It felt to K'luha that it was only getting worse. "I'm sorry..." Luha called softly towards K'ile and Piru.
"You didn't do anything," K'ile said to K'luha immediately, "Except try to move around. That was stupid."
The documents in her hands blurred so much that she had no way of knowing what was what, but Antimony continued to gather them up, trembling fingers moving them to piles in hasty, jerky motions. "You do not have to move," she murmured after a moment, voice shaking just slightly on the tail end. "I will... take care of everything. Don't worry." A breath and then, "I'm sorry. I never should have... I'm going."
K'ile stood away from the bed and walked over to K'piru. "Hey, are you alright?"
Of course she wasn't alright. Luha could see it without looking. That was her boss and now she was in trouble because of them... because mostly of Luha and her stupid injury and her stupid child and... Couldn't things ever look okay for more than six seconds? Again, Luha pulled the blanket over her head and tried to be as small and out of the way as possible.
The small stacks she'd gathered combined to become larger stacks; she couldn't remember when she'd managed to collect so much evidence. At K'ile's approach, she flinched and uttered again, "Don't worry. I'm going." One hand caught on the headless doll, and she gripped it white-knuckled.
K'ile put a hand on K'piru's shoulder, "That's not what I'm talking about!"
She turned to search for her satchel only to find K'ile in her way and blinked past the blur of her vision to his nose. Something keened in the back of her mind, a desperate wail that tore through a grief-stricken desert camp. "I have to go now," she repeated faintly. "You needn't worry. I'll pay for the room. She won't have to move."
"Piru, I'm worried about you!" He put a hand on each of the woman's shoulders, holding her, "You're too tired and stressed for this. You don't have to let that woman bully you."
She wasn't sure she would call it bullying, as she understood where Illira was coming from as an employer, but she knew K'ile would not understand that. Even standing face to face with him, Antimony found that whatever crevice Illira's words had carved now seemed insurmountable, terrifying in its vastness. Instead she shut her eyes briefly and tried, "I will be fine.†She didn’t know. “I can take care of myself well enough." A pause, and then a strained, "I need to go."
Looking behind him to the form huddled on the bed, K'ile said, "Luha, help me out."
Luha fearfully peered over at the two. She was trying to get out of the way, why did K'ile have to bring her back into the middle again? "I... I can understand that you have to work for your employer... but you should really make sure that you get rest as soon as you can." Luha looked nervously at K'ile. "If she doesn't listen to that women, she could lose her job and her livelihood. She couldn't live out on her own with no gil and no way to make gil K'ile... Employers get to boss you around... that's... just how the cities are. I've run enough jobs myself to know that..." K'luha was fairly certainly she didn't help. Probably did the opposite, but she wanted K'ile to understand that much at least. "But you should eat for sure... and rest when she allows you to..." Luha added after a moment.
Antimony did not reply to this, save for a subtle shifting of her ears and slight bowing of her head. The stack of papers she held in her hands shivered
K'ile released K'piru, turning back to K'luha and declaring, "She's not some Amal'jaa slave! She hasn't been tempered by her 'employer'!" Luha cringed visibly and slunk back as far away from the both of them as she could. She had nothing else to say.
K'ile's assertion brought a pained look to Antimony's face. "It is not that simple. My obligations..." The words seemed to light a flame beneath her feet, as she moved then, to the side, in search of her bag, papers clutched to her chest.
Obligations. For just a moment, the hearing that word come from K'piru's lips stung. She'd shirked every obligation she had to her tribe and family when she'd left him behind in the Sagolii, careless but for what she wanted to do. And now she would hide behind 'obligation' to some Ul'dahn as a reason to deny herself food and rest?
No, there was more to it than that. K'luha's words, about gil and about how cities just were, did not make any sense to him. He couldn't imagine any person from the tribe -- much less K'piru -- humbling themselves before some alien master in exchange for coins dropped ccallously on their heads.
"I don't understand!" He said, his tail swatting at the air viciously. Anxiety boiling in his gut calmed his words, but not his thoughts. "Do what you need to do. We'll be here, I guess." And K'piru, he was sure, would not be here. She would leave and hide in her obligations, fleeing from him again. Only this time, she thought she needed to lie.
There, against the opposite wall. Almost blindly, Antimony crossed the room and began to hastily stuff papers into the bag. Her vision blurred again; her eyes stung with a biting heat. Too much. It was too much. She couldn't--
"Aah," the wavering sound choked from her throat before she could stifle it fully. Bowing her head to hide the wetness on her cheeks, she stumbled to her feet, back to the table, feeling the weight of K'ile and K'luha's eyes as some monstrous flame at her back, pushing and pushing and threatening to consume her if she did not go. The arm not carrying the bag snatched at the doll and the coat, the paper wrapping and letter slipping to the floor unnoticed.
Miss Carceri's words loomed over her head like soot-laden clouds swelling from the fury of the flames, the haughty disapproval, the deserved judgment of her own failures. She had been a fool, she realized, fingers digging into the fur and leather of the coat. The texture of it sent a bolt of ice down her spine. She could not face K'ile, or K'luha, or anyone else who came for her, even when she thought she might, after all these years, have wanted to. They had clawed open a hole, an old wound wrapped around keening isolation, and she knew of only one way to escape such a feeling.
She made for the door.
And there was nothing K'luha could do about any of what had transpired. She was just as useless here as she was with the tribe. So she did nothing, which was all she could do.
Not moving from where he stood, K'ile watched K'piru. he felt like iron spikes had been driven through his joints, a red-hot rod stabbed into his gut. "Please take care of yourself, K'piru," he said, and muttered, "I'm sure you're going to do just fine."
Antimony fled blindly in a high panic, pushing through the door with the desperation of one fleeing a burning building. The action was irrational, childish, but she was not in a place to recognize that, just as she hadn't been amongst the sands, beneath the empty gaze of an absent god. She stumbled into the hall with all the self-awareness of a drunkard, turned one way and then the other. Long walls loomed menacingly in narrow, endless tunnels no matter which way she spun, and in the grain of their wood she saw faces twisted with pain, burnt nearly unrecognizable.
A small voice reminded her of Illira, who awaited her papers, her words, her excuses and reports, but the whole of it joined the flames threatening at her back and drove her forward through the hall, through the tavern, into the city streets. The brief thought of the repurcussions for these actions only served to push her further. The snow would hide her, she thought.
***
There was finally silence in the room as Luha and K'ile were left alone again. She felt the need to apologize, but somehow she felt like an apology would only serve to make things worse. She had managed to somehow ruin K'ile's reunion with Piru. And K'piru just ran like she had five years ago. Was family so torturous to her now? K'luha couldn't understand wanting to run from family. But she only knew now that she would probably never see K'piru again... and K'ile probably wouldn't see her either. And the latter was her fault for scaring K'piru away in the first place. She blamed herself, but she doubted that it made the situation any better to blame herself or voice that pain. She could only hope K'ile didn't blame her, and if he did that he would forgive her for it.
K'ile Tia just lingered where he stood, stock still and silent, for a few moments. And then he said, "I don't know what to do."
Luha peered up at K'ile's back, and pulled the blankets away from her face. "What did you do that last time she left?" she asked softly.
He turned and looked at a spot on the wall right next to K'luha. His face was a plain mask, like something an actor might wear to obscure their character. The flame of his hair was dim and still, his blue shivering subtly. "I don't remember. I think I just stopped being for a few years."
K'luha carefully lifted her hands and motioned for K'ile to come towards her. "Come. Sit."
The idea of moving in that moment was bizarre to K'ile. She might as well have asked him to lift Dalamud back into the sky. If he could move maybe he'd go after K'piru. He'd tried to once. He'd waited five to try again. He hadn't even told K'piru the things he'd waited five years to tell her. If he could move now maybe he would leave, too. K'ile could imagine himself walking out of that woman, carrying all of his pent up feelings with him.
Maybe if he were a little bit more like K'piru, he could just walk out and leave K'luha here and not come back. He would find someplace out there where he wouldn't have to deal with these things. "I hate that woman," he said. "She's the most selfish, cowardly person I've ever met. Maybe that's where K'ailia learned how to abandon people and pretend it's..."
K'luha felt her chest ache. He didn't hate K'piru. He probably wanted to with everything he had, but those promises he had made were still holding him back. She motioned with her hand again. She couldn't reach K'ile.Â
"K'ile... come here?" She asked softly again. There was no way to limp after him like she had before. She couldn't stop K'piru. And if he was going to go after her, she couldn't chase him either. All she could do was lay still, at the mercy of whatever torrent of emotions were assaulting him.
In a swift motion punctuated with a stubborn huff of air, K'ile moved as though cut free from iron bindings. He took two heavy steps towards the bed and turned his back on K'luha, dropping to the floor and leaning back against the bed.
It wasn't what she had really wanted, but at least she could reach him now. K'luha shifted herself over to the edge of the bed and place her hands softly on his shoulders. He could shrug her off he he wanted, but she wanted him to know that she was here.Â
"K'ile... I don't think I could ever make up for what K'piru meant to you, but I want you to know that I'm here for you. I always have been. Even when you didn't want me to be there five years ago, I'm going to be here to help you however I can. And I'm not going to run away anymore. I can't run anymore. So I'm going to be here. Okay?" She meant a lot of things both metaphorically and physically, but mostly she hoped that he understand what she was trying to say. And it was going to hurt if he pushed her away again, but K'luha was going to endure it.
"Meant," K'ile stated. "Not what she 'meant' to me anymore than what K'ailia 'meant' to you. It's what she means. She's not dead, she's just gone."
"I'm sorry... I meant... means...." K'luha replied quietly, casting her eyes downward. She had hoped that a grammar error would be his sole focus, but apparently it was. Just like K'piru was his sole focus most of the time. She loud out a long breath and bit her bottom lip.
He should've just left those boulders in the sand, unpolished. Now their weight loomed.
K'piru hadn't returned to her inn room. Not in the minutes he'd expected nor in the hours that he'd hoped, and as he began to predict the coming of dawn he sat staring at K'luha's broken body as though he were chained to it. Bindings wrapped his heart and throat, squeezing each a little more minute by minute. He felt cold even as his body sweat to try and compensate for the heat in the room.
*
It was both difficult and easy to sleep. She was too tired not to sleep, and yet concern for K'ile kept her awake. She was less concerned for K'piru, as the woman had seemed to make her hold on life in the city fairy well since leaving five years ago. She would come back... she had her things here. Important things. Even if it took a long time, K'luha was sure that K'piru would come back.Â
And the reassurance to herself helped her sleep. Although her dreams were plagued with the backs of her family members and K'ailia's cruel words. She tried not to believe that she was the things K'ailia called her. She tried not to believe her own daughter disregarded her like so much dirt. But to her, it was pretty clear that she did. Did K'ailia really think that K'luha should just be okay with it all?Â
The thoughts and half-lucid dreams of Luha made her blink away, startled when she realized something.Â
"My linkpearl..." Luha mumbled, grasping for the necklace. It was gone. She must have left it in the other room before she ran. Luha frowned and looked over towards K'ile's form. She could almost see his body shaking and sweating with fear. "Not yet...?"
With a blink, K'ile Tia's gaze snapped from K'luha's tail to her face. He rolled his neck to loosen his muscles, resetting his posture. The slight movement stirred nausea in his stomach, but he ignored it as much as he could and it settled within moments. He shrugged at K'luha and said, "Not quite yet. Something must've come up. She's a..." he searched for the words. "I don't know. She works with money. Ul'dahns worship money, right?"
"An... accountant?" Luha offered. She'd heard the word before. She had hired one before as well, but they usually fucked her over. Metaphorically speaking of course. "And they do. I'm sure she'll be back." K'luha breathed out slowly, glancing up to the ceiling. "Could you check the front desk? I left my linkpearl in the room I was in before I..." K'luha trailed off and frowned. "Anyway, I left it behind. Maybe they have it at the front. Maybe you'll see her walking in if you check. You don't have to. Just... I do want to see if my linkpearl's still around." K'luha frowned quietly, still grasping for it at her neck but grapsing only at her skin.
"I can check on your pearl," he said, though his very first thought was to hope the thing had been lost permanently. Though that would leave K'ailia with a direct, unmoderated line to Tahj. Like a demon corrupting the girl in secret.
With that in mind, he said, "Yeah, we'll find it. No problem," as he stood and moved towards the door. "There anything else you need?"
Something else... K'luha faintly realized that she was above the bed's blankets and the lack of movement had her utterly freezing. Hadn't Piru gone to ask for more blankets and such? Maybe that was the problem...
"Didn't Piru go to ask for blankets...? Well... maybe she left a message with the front desk. See if you can't get an extra blanket. But wait... my pocket... ah... that's bad." K'luha realized she had left all her gil in that room as well. All her things were in that room... "Better idea. Go check the room. I had paid for it for a few days so maybe they left my things in there. And if not, see if you can't manage to get anything from the front desk. If they took all my gil, they could at least not charge us for having extra people in this room." Luha frowned faintly, also finally half realizing that Piru had pulled down to expose her hip injury... but that she was pretty much in her underwear which Piru had pulled half off. Awkward. Ah well. At least everyone was too tense to realize it.
This was starting to sound a bit like a chore. K'ile grimaced and stretched. Sitting on the floor all night had not been kind to his body, and there was an ache radiating downward from the base of his tail. "Alright, alright. I'll find your stuff. I'll be right back, and unlike some people, I'll actually come back."
He stepped out of the room in no great hurry, but closed the foor firmly behind him. His senses, once free of the intimate scents of K'luha and K'piru, were assaulted with the stink of Ul'dah. He shook his head against it and pulled on one ear, lingering for a moment, and then walked down the hallway, taking the turn towards K'luha's room.
What splintered wood had lay in the hallway had been cleared and a piece of rope hastily strung across the entryway, a dangling sign that read "No entry". For once, something simple enough that he could actually read it. And ignore it.
K'ile flicked the sign and fire flickered to life on either side, the soulstones on his bracelet glowing dimly for a moment. He pulled on the weakened rope and it snapped wasily, the fire snuffed as it fell away. He stepped over the pile of wood immediately inside of the room and perused what had been K'luha's accomadation until... What, K'ailia had attacked her? He was still had no idea what had actually transpired.
When the Tia returned to K'piru's inn room a few minutes later, he carried a multitude of items. In one hand were a blanket and pillow, pulled conveniently from the bed of the broken room, and in the other was a satchel (presumably K'luha's) into which he'd stuffed everything that he found that might belong to the woman. Her gil was included. If the work-people at this inn weren't so lazy, they might've robbed her, but they apparently hadn't given the room more than a few seconds' consideration.
K'luha felt bad for asking so much of K'ile... but maybe the task would keep his mind pre-occupied from K'piru's delayed return. She would come back... she would. Again, K'luha had to reassure herself that Piru would come back. Then again...
The silence in the now empty room was somewhat deafening. Luha laid still and bit her bottom lip, her ands carefully grabbing her clothing and readjusting it for comfort. She straightened out her pantlettes and pulled up on her camise. Despite being cold, it simply felt more comfortable to have less shirt-like things covering her at the moment.Â
In the rest of the ensuing silence, K'luha tried not to think about K'ailia's cruelty. She tried not to think of K'ailia at all. Maybe if she could just calm down, she could accept it. Maybe... maybe if they would allow tribe members to come and go more freely... maybe then K'ailia wouldn't have to be exiled. She could be free to be herself, and then she could still have her family. Truely, it was her own self-imposed exile and rejection of her family that most bothered Luha. If she could be brought back, even if she wasn't in person then... then maybe Luha could accept that. It would be easier for her if things were like that.Â
Sometime between thinking and K'ile's return she fell asleep. The door's opening startled her awake again and she partially jolted to sit up, only to inhaled sharply and lay back down. "Owowowowowowow..."
"Luha!" K'ile snapped when he heard her, half-expecting the woman to have decided she could do laps around the room and had her leg break completely off her body when that proved untrue. Seeing the woman still on the bed, K'ile huffed anyway, "Can you really not just stay still?"
"N-no I-ow- just was-ow- startled when the -ow- door opened-ow." K'luha hissed and rubbed gingerly at her hip. She was too used to sitting up whenever K'ile walked in a room. She was really going to have to learn to lie still around him.
Tossing the satchel off to one side, K'ile walked over to the bed and looked down on K'luha, "Maybe Piru has some kind of paralysis potion we can use on you for a month or two." He smirked and dropped the pillow on her face.
Luha frowned, hissing taking deep breaths to try and stave off some of the pain. A paralysis potion? No way. She wasn't going to be paralyzed for however long this took to heal. She reached up and took the pillow off her face before pouting at K'ile. "No way. I'm just hoping it heals well enough to walk at this point."
"This'll be a good experience for you," K'ile said with a chuckle, dropping the blanket on K'luha's face. "You can only walk once you learn how to not walk for a while."
"This is horrific." K'luha pouted in return, grabbing the blanket he had put on her face and covering herself with it as much as possible. Which wasn't terribly well but better than before. "I can't move. How will I use the bathroom? How will I clean up? How can I do anything besides waste resources at the tribe?" She whined loudly and covered her face with the blanket. "Damnit."
"It's not that bad, Luha," K'ile said, sitting down next to K'luha on the bed and then shifting on a whim to lay next to her, though he was half-off the bed in order to fit. "You're not going to be completely immobile for a day or two, I bet, and once the feast we bought gets to the tribe nobody's going to complain about you not being able to contribute."
K'luha tried to move over a bit to let K'ile lay down, but swiftly gave up when it hurt. Instead she settled for dropping her arm on his chest and frowning at the ceiling.Â
"Problem. The Brass Blades are holding our feast shipments in Ul'dah here you know. They sent me a letter in Drybone. We'll have to try and argue our food out."
"What!" K'ile started, half sitting up, "That's bullshit! It's just FOOD!"
K'luha's arm slid down to lay across his lap and she frowned over at him. "I know that. But now we've got to argue about it with the Brass Blades."
Remaining rigid for a moment, his eyes flicking around in confusion for a time, K'ile slowly realized it wasn't something he needed to jump up and see to immediately. He eased back and lay his hand over K'luha's then readjusted himself so he was laying on his side and facing her. "The tribe's hungry. They need that food. Brass is flimsy. Can we just break them and get the food back?"
"We could just buy new food." K'luha suggested, glancing back over to K'ile. While she wouldn't mind just breaking in and stealing their food back... "If we steal back from them, we'll be in trouble. We won't be able to come here ever again. And if we fail, they'll lock us in metal cages until we rot."
"I don't understand," he admitted, "How can Ul'dah just take food we bought. That's our gil. They worship gil!"
"Something about an investigation...?" K'luha pouted and patted his chest lightly. "I don't know... I hardly understand it myself."
He let his head drop and lay next to K'luha's, Â muttering sadly, "I need that feast so I can be Nunh for you."
"We'll get it back K'ile..." K'luha frowned, disliking the sound of him being sad. She reached over to take his hand and shook it lightly. "We'll get it. Or we'll get a new one. We'll figure it out. Okay?"
Exhaling a sigh, K'ile breathed, "...Okay, Luha." He lay very still. His tail lifted and fell a single time.
Luha bit her bottom lip and just watched him for a few moments. Did he really believe her? She thought so and yet... Luha reached up with a hand and pressed it softly to his cheek, turning his head towards her. She didn't say anything, but just looked at him, eyes shimmering with a deep and burning compassion. It was something she always had burning in her eyes when people really looked at them.
The Tia blinked his blue eyes, his bright hair partially obscuring one of them. His hands lay limply against the covers that K'luha had wrapped herself in, his ears pitched back on his head in a sign of displeasure. His gaze, however, appeared contemplative, as he looked very closely at the curve of K'luha's nose, the circle of her cheeks, the two colors of her eyes.
K'luha left her eyes lingering on K'ile's. They were stunning really. It was... probably her favorite feature about him. Those eyes. They burned so intensely that the fire was a brilliant blue. She felt like she could be satisfied just staring at them for a while, but her hands moved on their own, pushing the blanket to cover K'ile as well as herself. At least he didn't have to be cold if he was hanging half-off the bed.
Smiling at the gesture, K'ile moved to fascilitate it. He reached one hand over K'luha's body and took holdy of her shoulder, pulling himself against her and pushing his forehead into her hair.
K'luha smiled a bit despite herself and let out a soft breath of air. It was natural, being like this. She didn't feel like she needed more even. With K'yohko, no matter how close she was she had always needed more from him. The things she needed, he simply couldn't give her to. But it felt so much better with K'ile. She didn't feel like she constantly had to have his body. Just this the way it was, she was happy.
***
Her feet ached. Antimony had noticed this well before she noticed night had fallen over Ul’dah, but it didn’t stop her motion. Her legs moved mindlessly, carrying her down an alley, around a corner, into another street, and onward through the circular maze of the city. She passed the Quicksand twice, but both times she could not bring her legs to stop or her feet to carry her back up those steps. Instead she continued to walk, paper-wrapped package held close to her chest and head bowed so that much of her view of the city was reduced to dirty, cobbled streets and a multitude of foreign feet. Sand and fire and loss dogged every step, voices and words she hadn’t thought of in years echoing in her skull. Coward. Selfish. They’re gone. I couldn’t save them. You couldn’t save them.
Her pace quickened despite the pain in her feet that had begun to lace up into her shins, but there was no escape from any of it in a city that took her in nothing but circles. For not the first time, her thoughts flitted to the parcel in her arms, to snow and cold and a warm invitation. No one would come looking for her in Coerthas. She had heard it was as isolated as anything could possibly be. Even if she didn’t find Mitari there to greet her, perhaps the cold could swallow the memories better than ocean and books.
But she had told K’ailia…
Walking became significantly more difficult around the time she also noticed the shadows along the buildings shifting and gaining a grey-blue hue. Her head felt impossibly heavy, and on more than one occasion she found herself on a side street with no memory of the steps that had taken her there. But there was a blessing in this exhaustion: her thoughts and memories, the pain and loss, the sharp ache of guilt and the creeping illness that churned her gut and flung harsh, vindictive words, had fallen back, buried under the weight of a tired mind.
One foot caught on an uneven stone then, sending her body lurching forward and the parcel flying from her arms to skid across the ground. At such an early morning, the street she had wandered into was largely empty, so no eyes turned to watch her tumble. She lay numbly on the stones for several minutes before grimacing at the needles lancing up her legs and the stinging in palms of her hands where she’d tried to catch her fall, and pulled herself to her knees. She blinked at an unbidden wetness in her eyes – a childish, instinctive reaction – and a moment later managed to stagger to her feet and scoop up Mitari’s gift.
When nothing but a keen awareness of her exhaustion greeted her mind, Antimony let out a long breath. She could finally return.
***
How she found her way back to the Quicksand, Antimony wasn’t certain, but the innkeep gave her an odd look when she walked past. The back halls passed in a blur, and when she pushed open the door to her inn room and stepped inside, she found herself blinking dumbly at K’luha and K’ile on her bed as though she’d forgotten they would even be there.
When the door opened, K'ile rolled out of the bed in a reaction so sudden one would think he was about to be attacked. But it was just K'piru. Just K'piru. It was the last and most important person he'd ever expected to see walking through a door, barring his dead brother, and every sense he had, every drop of his attention, focused immediately on the woman.
K'luha blinked as K'ile semi violently ripped himself away and off the bed. She was worried for a moment he'd gone and hurt himself, but then she realized the door was open. She carefully propped herself up lightly to note K'piru at the door and smiled. So she had come back after all. Thank goodness...Â
Luha dropped herself back down on the bed and decided she'd done enough interfering for the time being. Sleep would suit her fine for now.
Antimony looked between the two for several seconds before letting the door drift shut behind her. She could feel an echo of those gut-wrenching pains from before, but they were blissfully muted by the deep aching in her feet and the stinging in her hands. She wondered if she could just fall asleep standing and murmured a faint, "Hello," in greeting.
"K'piru," K'ile darted forward to the woman, putting one hand on each of the woman's shoulders and saying, "Are you alright? You look exhausted! You're covered in dirt."
Her ears shifted back when K'ile approached suddenly, the deep, familial scent he brought with him invading her senses. To distract herself, she adjusted her grip on the parcel in her arms and leaned to one side as though to move around him. "I... needed some air," she said by way of explanation, keeping her eyes averted.
Feeling as though he'd been struck, K'ile pulled back his hands and stepped away from K'piru, trying not to notice the onrush of nausea. "I understand." He looked around the room. "How were you planning to...?"
She stood still for a moment after he stepped back, as though unsure what to do with the space given. The weight in her arms brought out sluggish action after a time, however, and she moved to deposit the parcel on as empty a place as one could find upon nearby table. The air displaced by its arrival pushed at a precarious stack of papers, sending them scattering to the floor. A thin sound caught in the back of her throat at the sight, and she half bent as though to chase after them but stopped about halfway through the action.
K'ile was all too eager to pick up the pages on K'piru's behalf. "I've got it, don't worry. You should rest. It's fine. I've got it." His teal flicked back and forth behind him.
If K'ile hadn't said it earlier, K'luha wouldn't have believed that he loved her. But she took deep breaths and tried not to listen in on private conversations and sleep instead.
Rest. Not with either of them here, not when she was breathing their scents and hearing their subtle sounds, and each moment was a struggle not to fall apart. If she slept now, the dreams that would haunt her would not allow for rest. Instead she murmured, "It is morning now." She watched his hands on the papers, almost warned him to be wary of reading them as they were private documents, but that life seemed so far removed from his existence that it hardly seemed necessary.
At least, it had once been far removed.
She found herself reaching out to still his hands with one of her own while the other picked up the remaining pages quietly. "I'm sorry," she sighed and leaned against the table when she straightened.
It was pretty close to impossible to miss K'piru's state of weariness. Even her protests were weak. "You should sleep," he said. "If I'm bothering you I'll leave."
The papers in her hand struck the table with surprising force, sending a short ripple through the rest of the disorganized pile, and Antimony blinked at them for several seconds, wondering who had thrown them down.
Oh.
"You will stay with K'luha," she said simply and forced her attention to the parcel she'd brought in, fingers moving to toy with the knot of twine holding its wrapping together.
K'ile stood, took a deep breath, and frowned. He wished he had even a slight bit of understanding as to what the inside of K'piru's head was like. Maybe then he'd have a clue as to what she was getting mad about.
"I have things to do anyway," K'ile said. "Apparently someone took some stuff we bought for some reason, and with Luha resting, it's up to me to find it and figure out what the Ul'dahns want with it."
The knot came undone with minimal effort, and the paper followed, crinkling under her hands until fur and leather and red and purple cloth were revealed. She tried to feel grateful, but instead a strange, nervous guilt settled on her shoulders and dragged her tail down to her legs. K'ile seeing the gift made her want to hide in shame, as though it would tell him every horrible thing she had thought while walking Ul'dah's streets, every act she had contemplated that it had stood testament to.
Where had the protection of her exhaustion gone?
Her fingers dug into the fur collar of the coat, and she finally processed K'ile's own words. "Took?" She blinked slowly, frowned. "Who...?"
"Uhm," He looked over towards K'luha, who seemed to be trying to sleep, and then back to K'piru. "Brass swords?" he guessed, mostly sure he'd gotten the words right even if he didn't understand what they meant.
"Brass Blades." Luha corrected.
“The Blades," Antimony echoed and then sighed. "Customs. Or..." The thought that her... that K'ile and K'luha had run into the type of individuals she was investigating made her uneasy. Yet it was likely. This was a problem, however, and Antimony latched onto it as a ready distraction. "Did they give you a contact to speak with to reacquire the goods?" Lifting the folded coat from the paper then, Antimony froze and paled at something beneath it before dropping the item hastily back in place.
Luha propped herself up again and waved  a hand at K'ile before whistling. "Skirt pocket. On the bottom. Yellow paper."
"Lay down," Antimony said firmly, without looking fully at K'luha.
K'ile stepped back and said, "Okay, you two know what's going on. That's good." He paced over towards Luha and spoke more or less at the same time K'piru did to say, "Lay down."
Letting out a small sigh, still looking shaken from whatever she'd seen in the package, Antimony continued quietly, "If they did, it is good. Documentation means... it will be harder for them to justify losing it."
K'luha sat up a bit further out of spite and reached over to try and grab her skirt.
K'ile saw this coming and pushed K'luha back down into the bed, "We talked about this. You were about one inch away from adding on another day of not being able to move at all." He paused. "Probably."
K'luha flopped back without much effort and snapped her fingers at him before pointing at her skirt.
Frowning down at Luha, K'ile snapped back at her buit grabbed her skirt anyway, searching the pockets for...
Swallowing confusion and an unhealthy degree of anxiety and guilt, Antimony stepped up alongside K'ile and made to take the skirt from him. "It will be a notice of search and siezure, likely marked with the local Blade seal," she muttered and removed a folded sheet of paper from one pocket. When opened, the page displayed a declaration of suspicion of unlicensed cargo shipment. Antimony blinked at it and tried to recall if any such regulation existed, but her knowledge of Ul'dahn laws was rather limited to the scope of her own work.
Letting the skirt get pulled from his fingers, K'ile protested dumbly, "Search and seizure? But we bought it. What is wrong with Ul'dah that they make us buy things and then just take them?"
Pursing her lips, Antimony examined the paper more, her eyes catching on a familiar name that brought a frown even further down her brow. "They monitor the goods going in and out of their lands for legal reasons," she explained distractedly and then sighed. "... I... may be able to fix this."
"That's..." K'ile let his hands fall to his sides and grimaced. "You don't need to. Just tell me where to look and I'll find it."
"It's not that quite so simple," Antimony spoke quietly, eyes down on the paper. "Suspicious shipment... if your... ah, food?" She blinked in confusion and then continued, "If it still exists in Ul'dah, you will need to clear it with the Blades. I... know the woman involved."
"The woman involved?" Luha questioned faintly, against slightly propping herself up so she could at least see Piru properly.
K'ile almost absent-mindedly pushed K'luha back down, having no input on the situation, too confused to understand it completely.
"Stahp that," Luha grumbled, pushing his hand off her and trying to prop herself up again. "It doesn't hurt. It's only a little bit."
K'ile stubbornly pushed Luha back onto the bed, "No. You don't even understand what 'stay still' means."
"Miss Loughree. She is currently under... ah. It..." Antimony hesitated, worried the paper in her hands and flicked her eyes briefly towards the others before turning away once more. "Suffice to say, I'm certain I can resolve this."
"I don't doubt it," K'ile Tia responded. "I just don't like that I seem to have brought you so many problems."
Ears drooping, Antimony managed only a faint, "It is no trouble."
"It's not about causeing trouble or not..." K'ile muttered, looking to K'luha for help.
K'luha looked back to K'ile and sighed. "We... could really use her help though K'ile. I don't know how to wade through these legal things..."
"I will resolve this for you," Antimony repeated lowly. The hand that held the notice dropped to her side while her other moved to rub at one temple.
K'ile pulled on one ear in frustration and sat down on the bed next to K'luha, looking suddenly exhausted. With K'piru's return rendered and her inserting herself forcefully into K'ile's problems, he found the obsessive worry that he'd had over her... not gone, but distant. As if he had placed it in the hands of someone he could trust for a short time.
With that weight off his shoulders, his tiredness fell on him like the rush of a sandstorm, and sagged under his own weight comfortably. He'd eaten very little and slept very little in his eagerness to get to K'piru, in his worry since then.
"Thank you... K'piru." K'luha called, a small smile peeking out towards her aunt. Maybe things could be resolved finally. Maybe... everything could be okay again. Although, that sense quickly faded at K'ile sagged down and dropped onto the bed next to her.Â
She carefully put a hand to his back and let her fingers soothingly run along his spine.Â
"Hey, everyone needs some rest and food. Piru, I've got enough gil in my purse to cover a second room if you'd like some proper rest." Luha offered, staying flat on the bed this time.
"There's no need." As she spoke, she moved back to the table and, after a moment, added uneasily, "I will need you with me to testify, K'ile."
"Alright, I am stupid, but my turn to tell you morons something. Everyone sleeps and eats first before we do another damn thing." K'luha interjected loudly.
His head popped up, ears standing straight up, when K'piru said she needed something from him. "What? Uh. Alright! I can do that!" His ears shifted to point at K'luha, and in a moment's time his tone shifted down, "That's true. You really need to take care of yourself more than you need to take care of us."
"She is not in a shape to move, nor do I wish to sleep at this time," Antimony murmured, distractedly smoothing out the creases in the notice.
***
A dark haired, lankey Elezen approached the Quicksand's receptionist. She exchanged a series of words with the man, causing him to frown considerably. He shook his head, causing the woman to set her hand down heavily on the counter. She pulled out papers from her dust covered satchel pushing them over the surface.Â
After a few minutes, where the man ducked away from his post, he returned, telling her a room number. The woman nodded her head, tucking the neatly folded papers away into her satchel, and walked up the Inn's stairs.
Walking with long, sure strides down the hallway, Illira Carceri scanned the room numbers listed on the doorway, eventually stopping at one at the end of the tunnel, near a stairwell. She looked it over, before planting her feet down and brushing off a few traces of sand from her red linen shirt.
She took a breath before knocking firmly on the door.
***
Sighing heavily, K'ile gestured over his shoulder, "Piru, when it's Luha telling you that you need to take a break, that's pretty-" He stopped suddenly at the knock on the door, turning to look at the doorknob as though it had been trying to say something to him.
"You don't have to sleep now, just before you go out and try to deal with the Brass Blades." Luha continued after the initial silence of the door knocking. She glared at the door a little bit, but turned her gaze back to Piru after a second.
Antimony looked up sharply at the knock, her ears shifting back further. "Ulanan...?" She muttered under her breath and gave an uneasy look over her shoulder in K'ile and K'luha's general direction. How would she explain to her friend what she had...
She hesitated and as a result, took significantly longer to answer the door than was likely polite. In the end, however, her unwillingness to leave a friend hanging pushed her to action, and she moved to open the door. Her gaze shifted down automatically to greet her shorter companion but saw only a pair of long legs. She blinked at them dumbly for several seconds.
Illira stared down her long nose at the older Miqo'te in front of her. She pressed her lips together tightly, the very edges of them turned upwards slightly in an almost sardonic manner. "Were you going to leave me hanging forever Antimony? For someone normally so eager to leave a good impression. This is not the way. Especially after last time." She turned her head up, looking over Antimony's head. "Oh, but you have company. How rude of me to interrupt thusly on such an..." She drifted off, casting her steely eyes over the other woman stretched out on the bed, "… obviously personal moment."
It probably didn't help that K'ile wasn't wearing a shirt, which he never was, so he was ignorant of the implications of such as he stood from the bed and crossed his arms. He didn't know who the woman was, but he did not miss her tone.
"Ah...?" Antimony's eyes dragged up the legs and then widened as her features paled significantly, her ears pressing tight against her skull. "Miss... Miss Carceri...! What are you... That is, I--Oh..." She fell back a step from the door, looking faint with sudden realization. "Oh no."
K'luha grasped for K'ile's tail and quietly tried to make him sit down again. She too felt a little... intruded upon but, there was very little she could do.
"Oh no is right, Antimony. Have you been using company funds on such... what is this even? A late-in-life journey of self-discovery?" She shook her head, braids flapping. "I sent you messages for news, after I recieved none. And thusly have dragged myself back into this... sad pit." Her lips clenched tighter at the last thought, looking as if she wanted to spit viciously at the mere thought.
K'ile sat down next to K'luha, muttering to the woman, "I don't understand. Journies of discovery are good, right?"
"I think so..." K'luha whispered back, nervously petting K'ile's back. More to calm her own nerves than his at this point. She hated being quite so defenseless when someone seemed to be on the offensive.
Antimony's tail puffed up rather dramatically in distress. "Whaat?" She squeaked, coughed to try and clear her throat, and found her thoughts spinning. How could she have forgotten? How could she have possibly...! Of course, she knew how; every moment of every day in this city had seemed bent on splitting her attention until she just tore apart at the seams.
And it seemed Miss Carceri was here to finish the job.
"I promise you this is not--not what you are thinking it--I'm not... they are family!" She swayed a bit dizzily and looked up towards Illira, at a loss as to how to defend herself, knowing there really was no defense. Antimony wilted, bowing her head so low that her spine curved forward to join it. "The delay is inexcusable, I realize. I am deeply sorry," she managed weakly.
At K'piru's distress K'ile rose from the bed without consideration, moving towards her.
Illira lifted a brow, "Family? I apologize. But I do not believe that I have ever found myself in such a situation with my own."
K'luha frowned as K'ile walked away from her. Goddamn it. She hated this stupid broken hip.
"Though,†the elezen continued, “I'm sure that you'll say it’s not what it seems. And that would be mistaking my curiosity for care. Trust me. It’s not."
Antimony winced at Illira's words. "It is not... ah, I was only assisting... she is injured!" She tried rather helplessly to explain, gesturing behind her towards K'luha. "Please, you did not--there was no need for you to have traveled so far to... I am very sorry!"
K'ile inserted himself between K'piru and the newcomer, "Hey! For your information the woman over there was seriously injued and possibly dying. I don't know what family you come from that doesn't drop everything for that, but you'r not making yourself look good, miss... Ul'dah person."
Something spasmed in Antimony's expression as K'ile thrust himself into the situation and chastised Illira. Her hands flew up as though to stop him but froze mid-air.
Illira tucks her head in further to take in the shirtless man that has thrust himself between herself and her degenerate employee. "I rather think this is not your business, Mr... ladies-man."
"Please!" Antimony burst out, hands still hovering uselessly in the air. "Just... allow me to explain, you must allow me to explain! I am simply helping them recover--recover her health and, aah, I was going to look into a lost shipment but only on off time and I wouldn't dream of using company funds on any of this, I swear I have not, I've been very careful, but so much has been going on since my report to you and I was nearly arrested but not really and one of the clients is targeted for assassination but I promise to you I was making very solid progress up until this point, I've only been distracted and--" She ran well out of breath at this point and gasped for air before squeaking out with an aimless gesture towards the table, "See??"
The table, for inquiring minds, was covered in a mess of papers, one headless doll, and a folded winter coat just unwrapped from a mail package.
Not backing down a single millimeter, K'ile leaned forward to focus his glare on Illira's chin, "Lots of big words, but she sounds respectful. You better be, too."
K'luha just laid still quietly and cursed everything for it being a broken hip.
Illira narrowed her eyes at the table, ignoring the man below her. "It has been three weeks since your last report. If you were having such trouble you should have reported as such and requested some back-up or for another to take over. As it is, you have wasted valuable company time. Time is money, Antimony. You should well know that. As it is... your... collection on appears to be a mess worthy of D'hein's own desk."
K'ile hummed, and looked over his shoulder to gauge the woman's reaction, unable to discern on his own if the Elezen's words counted as rude or not.
"Aah," a faint, worried sound escaped Antimony's throat and she brought her hands together in front of her, digits shaking. The room spun and she spoke again in rapid fire: "I know. I understand. I do. I know. I promise you. I've tried to--I've found a--I... nngh--" Her words cut off suddenly as she stumbled to the side and caught herself on the table. She felt light-headed, her thoughts fuzzy as she murmured weakly, "There will be no more delays."
"I am here to help you, Antimony, if you need it. But I think that it’s too late to simply say, 'There will be no more delays.' It is not only yourself that is responsible in this instance, as I am responsible for you as your supervisor on this investigation." Illira shook her head again, before pressing her hand down on the man's shoulder, pushing him towards the inward swung door.
Standing solidly against the pushing hand, K'ile knocks the hand away, gives the woman a smirk, and then moves away of his own volition, back towards K'luha.
Sinking into the lone chair next to the table, Antimony held her head in her hands. "Too much," she whispered to herself, "This is far, far too..." She drew a shaky breath and peered up at Illira once more. "What do you wish me to do?"
Stepping into the room, Illira looked around closer, taking in fully the pair of Miqo'te by the bed, and the lone woman now hunched over her desk. "To do the job that you are being paid to do. It is early morning, and yet you languish in your room with your... family..." She motioned towards the bed. "I am here to help expedite the process as necessary. But I cannot do your job. If you need something not directly involving those under investigation I may lend my hand. But this has to make headway. I can practically smell D'hein's fowl breath on the nape of my neck."
"Of... of course," Antimony sighed, casting a strained look towards K'ile and K'luha without really focusing on them. Her ears and tail hung low, shamed, as she slowly returned her attention to Illira. "I... right away. I will get back to work immediately," she declared quietly.
K'ile lifted the satchel he'd earlier tossed on the floor up onto the bed and gave Illira a frown, "Nobody's languishing and K'piru is exhausted from her work already. She needs to rest."
"Oh? She's exhausted from her work is she? That’s funny. You know nothing of the matter except how to distract her. Such is obvious from her short, but already full history of such matters."
"No, she is correct," Antimony shook her head at K'ile's words. "I've... obligations that cannot be ignored. I... had not intended to ignore them." She grimaced, rubbed at her eyes behind her glasses where an itchy dryness had set in. K'ile and K'luha had not felt so distant now since that night in the desert, so long ago; the thought chilled her. "Immediately," she repeated. "I recall I'd found certain individuals I need to... I can go now. I apologize, you shouldn't feel the need to linger here." And as heavily as she had sat moments earlier, Antimony pushed to her feet.
Ignoring the Elezen woman, K'ile focused his attention on K'piru. "You have an obligation to yourself. How much real work are you going to get down without rest or food? You should know better than any of us."
"And why do you purport that she is so exhausted? It seems that you, yourself has had such a part to play in these matters. She is not in town to entertain and attend your needs..." Illira walked over to the bed where the undressed woman lay. "You both cannot stay here. As this is paid for with company funds, it is single occupancy company housing."
K'luha glanced over towards the satchel where her gil would be. Thankfully K'ile had sat it on the bed. She carefully reached forward and rummaged about it before picking up a small coin purse.Â
"I can reimburse you for the room." Luha offered, picking up the nessacery coinage from her purse.
Antimony straightened and made to protest, "I've already discussed it with the front desk - all... all additional fees are to be sent to my personal account! She cannot move with a broken hip."
K'ile shook his head at the woman, "She doesn't care. She's just being a bitch."
"K'ile..." Luha called, reaching with her other free hand and grabbing his tail. "Stop. Don't make it harder for... Antimony." The name sounded strange to Luha, but if that's what she was going called then Luha would respect that for the time being.
Casting her hooded gaze back onto Antimony, "Even so, those papers that you have on your... desk are confidential in nature. And as your... friend is so eager to point out, you need your rest. And you will not get that taking care of an -injured- woman. That is not your job. That is a medic’s. Which is where she should be, if she is really hurt. Not tucked away in a tiny inn room meant to hold one person. I highly doubt the inn would approve of such stretched room occupancy." Shaking her head, she addressed the man. "If you insist on calling my personage names, perhaps you should give me your own, so that I might return the favour someday, hmm?"
His tail straining against K'luha's grip a bit, K'ile thrust his finger at Illira's chest, "It's not a name. it's an observation. Name's K'ile Tia if you want, but I don't even want your name."
Antimony rather shrunk at Illira's none-too-friendly lecture and turned away from K'luha and K'ile. Her hands shook so she clasped them together in front of her. She felt a chasm forming between her and them, driven on by Illira, but could not find any means to protest it, was not even sure she should want to. Instead, she kept her eyes down, sensing bits of herself fraying horribly and helpless to prevent it, and said flatly, "I will have them moved. I apologize."
This wouldn't have all been such the problem if K'luha hadnt gone and... The injured woman sighed heavily. She just wanted to walk out of the damn room, but she didn't have the choice to do that anymore. Instead, she limply let go of K'ile's tail and hid her face away in the extra blanket. She really did not want to be in Ul'dah anymore.
Illira nodded her head, thick brows dipping inward slightly. She did not look away as she said, "That is the right course of action Antimony. I would suggest moving your Tia out as well. He does not seem to have been a good influence on you, even if he is family, I surmise that that he is not blood kin. At least I should hope not, especially given what I know of Seekers."
Placing himself directly in front of the Elezen, K'ile demanded, "What is wrong with you? Why is everyone in Ul'dah so crooked and greedy, just barging in and bullying and taking what they want? Dealing with everything sideways instead of straight on."
"K'ile, stop," Antimony uttered lowly, a faint strain of pleading in her voice in the way it shook, not looking up or towards him. "Don't... make this... I... can help you find a physician for K'luha. I'm sorry."
Illira brow furrowed heavily as she took in a heavy, steadying breath. Her jaw tight and squared, she said, "You've been out in the desert to long Tia. You obviously know nothing of work, much less Antimony's, or you would not be saying any such a thing. You think I like it here in Ul'dah? I am only back in the cesspit because my subordinate has neglected to even send a report in three weeks. I would not set foot back in this city if I did not have to, the very air within this place riles my blood, its corruption lies so deep. So do not speak with me about such matters. You will find none so forthright as me."
Looking to the side for one moment, the short Tia very suddenly and with no warning whatsoever subjected the Elezen to one of his better uppercuts, a punch that harkened back to that one time he beat K'yohko half to death for treating K'piru in a similar way. "How's that for forthright, bitch!?"
"K'ile, stop!" Antimony cried out uselessly, spinning around to close the distance between her and him and grab frantically at his hands.
Illira's head was knocked back, as K'ile's uppercut caught her chin. She stepped back, catching the blow that if given to a person his own size, would have likely knocked them on their ass. In reality though, the punch thrown onto the much taller woman wasn’t able to do deliver such a knockout.Â
She reached a hand upwards rubbing her jaw, as she moved her other foot back a step. "You should run back to your dunes little Tia. I know you mean well, defending what you believe to be Antimony's honor. But intention only takes you so far, assaulting me is neither the moral, the legal, nor the right course of action. I will forgive one such thing though as you are obviously so far gone to your baser instincts."
K'luha's head emerged again as K'ile went for the aggressive. Yes the woman was a bitch but... She watched nervously, internally furious that she literally could do nothing but lay there and watch it all happen. What was there to do? The only thing she could do was get out of the way as fast as possible and talk with Piru later. Â Luha looked towards Piru and mouthed something that would have been missed by the others. Hopefully, Piru saw her silent apologies.Â
Slowly, K'luha sat up and pulled the blanket around her form. Maybe she could catch K'ile's attention doing something stupid again. But either way, getting out of the way was her goal and a winning situation. Carefully, painfully, she moved herself towards the edge of the bed to maybe limp or hop out of the room.
K'ile wasn't precisely sure what all of those words the Elezen woman was using meant, but he knew her tone hadn't changed any. He would've hit her again if K'piru hadn't gone for his hands. He didn't want to be violent anywhere within arm's reach of K'piru, so his arms fell quickly and he pulled himself away from the Elezen, letting her blathering continue.
As he turned his face away, he could see K'luha moving, and he should've known she would. He pounced on the woman almost as fast as he'd struck the Elezen, grabbing Luha by one shoulder to stop her movement. He said sternly, "Luha cannot be moved. That is not an option. No cowardice, intentions or self-important vomitting can change that."
K'luha halted when she felt K'ile suddenly stop her with a strong hand on her shoulder. She just... didn't want to be a part of this Ul'dahn nonsense anymore. She wanted to go back home to Tahj and fuck everything else. But she didn't move again when K'ile stopped her, instead pulling the blaket further around her form and almost hiding in it.
Antimony fell back almost immediately when K'ile relented, twisting away once more to stare half-panicked at Illira. "He did not mean it, I--I assure you! Just... let me deal with them and I'll... they will not be a bother further!" She turned to the table and began to rather desperately try to sort through the papers there, searching.
Still rubbing her jaw, "Then please see to it. She does not have to move, but if that is the case, then you must relocate. Though I would highly suggest that she see a real healer, if it is as bad as you believe. You are an accountant. Not a medical or healing arts practioner Antimony. I should step outside for you to clean up your own mess now and arrange for my own unfortunate stay."
Closing her eyes, hands shaking so much that the papers in her hands rattled, Antimony nodded hastily. "Yes, I understand, of course. I'll... it won't take long, I assure you. Everything will be taken care of, and I'll--I'll get back to work."
K'ile pushed K'luha back down into a laying position, one hand on the woman's back to make sure the movement was easy and slow.
K'luha complied, laying back down slowly and continuing to avert her gaze and hide her face as subtly as possible.
Illira walked towards the door, opening it back up, "We will talk later this morning Antimony, in a less... raucous environment if you would. I would not want to be the reason that your Tia is arrested for assault."
K'ile observed somberly, "She just wants to be able to bully you without being called on it."
Swallowing thickly, Antimony could only nod once more to Illira's words. She straightened the papers in her hand a fourth time without thinking.
The elezen walks out of the room, closing the door behind her.
K'luha listened to the woman walk out of the room, but the tension in the room did not lighten as she left. It felt to K'luha that it was only getting worse. "I'm sorry..." Luha called softly towards K'ile and Piru.
"You didn't do anything," K'ile said to K'luha immediately, "Except try to move around. That was stupid."
The documents in her hands blurred so much that she had no way of knowing what was what, but Antimony continued to gather them up, trembling fingers moving them to piles in hasty, jerky motions. "You do not have to move," she murmured after a moment, voice shaking just slightly on the tail end. "I will... take care of everything. Don't worry." A breath and then, "I'm sorry. I never should have... I'm going."
K'ile stood away from the bed and walked over to K'piru. "Hey, are you alright?"
Of course she wasn't alright. Luha could see it without looking. That was her boss and now she was in trouble because of them... because mostly of Luha and her stupid injury and her stupid child and... Couldn't things ever look okay for more than six seconds? Again, Luha pulled the blanket over her head and tried to be as small and out of the way as possible.
The small stacks she'd gathered combined to become larger stacks; she couldn't remember when she'd managed to collect so much evidence. At K'ile's approach, she flinched and uttered again, "Don't worry. I'm going." One hand caught on the headless doll, and she gripped it white-knuckled.
K'ile put a hand on K'piru's shoulder, "That's not what I'm talking about!"
She turned to search for her satchel only to find K'ile in her way and blinked past the blur of her vision to his nose. Something keened in the back of her mind, a desperate wail that tore through a grief-stricken desert camp. "I have to go now," she repeated faintly. "You needn't worry. I'll pay for the room. She won't have to move."
"Piru, I'm worried about you!" He put a hand on each of the woman's shoulders, holding her, "You're too tired and stressed for this. You don't have to let that woman bully you."
She wasn't sure she would call it bullying, as she understood where Illira was coming from as an employer, but she knew K'ile would not understand that. Even standing face to face with him, Antimony found that whatever crevice Illira's words had carved now seemed insurmountable, terrifying in its vastness. Instead she shut her eyes briefly and tried, "I will be fine.†She didn’t know. “I can take care of myself well enough." A pause, and then a strained, "I need to go."
Looking behind him to the form huddled on the bed, K'ile said, "Luha, help me out."
Luha fearfully peered over at the two. She was trying to get out of the way, why did K'ile have to bring her back into the middle again? "I... I can understand that you have to work for your employer... but you should really make sure that you get rest as soon as you can." Luha looked nervously at K'ile. "If she doesn't listen to that women, she could lose her job and her livelihood. She couldn't live out on her own with no gil and no way to make gil K'ile... Employers get to boss you around... that's... just how the cities are. I've run enough jobs myself to know that..." K'luha was fairly certainly she didn't help. Probably did the opposite, but she wanted K'ile to understand that much at least. "But you should eat for sure... and rest when she allows you to..." Luha added after a moment.
Antimony did not reply to this, save for a subtle shifting of her ears and slight bowing of her head. The stack of papers she held in her hands shivered
K'ile released K'piru, turning back to K'luha and declaring, "She's not some Amal'jaa slave! She hasn't been tempered by her 'employer'!" Luha cringed visibly and slunk back as far away from the both of them as she could. She had nothing else to say.
K'ile's assertion brought a pained look to Antimony's face. "It is not that simple. My obligations..." The words seemed to light a flame beneath her feet, as she moved then, to the side, in search of her bag, papers clutched to her chest.
Obligations. For just a moment, the hearing that word come from K'piru's lips stung. She'd shirked every obligation she had to her tribe and family when she'd left him behind in the Sagolii, careless but for what she wanted to do. And now she would hide behind 'obligation' to some Ul'dahn as a reason to deny herself food and rest?
No, there was more to it than that. K'luha's words, about gil and about how cities just were, did not make any sense to him. He couldn't imagine any person from the tribe -- much less K'piru -- humbling themselves before some alien master in exchange for coins dropped ccallously on their heads.
"I don't understand!" He said, his tail swatting at the air viciously. Anxiety boiling in his gut calmed his words, but not his thoughts. "Do what you need to do. We'll be here, I guess." And K'piru, he was sure, would not be here. She would leave and hide in her obligations, fleeing from him again. Only this time, she thought she needed to lie.
There, against the opposite wall. Almost blindly, Antimony crossed the room and began to hastily stuff papers into the bag. Her vision blurred again; her eyes stung with a biting heat. Too much. It was too much. She couldn't--
"Aah," the wavering sound choked from her throat before she could stifle it fully. Bowing her head to hide the wetness on her cheeks, she stumbled to her feet, back to the table, feeling the weight of K'ile and K'luha's eyes as some monstrous flame at her back, pushing and pushing and threatening to consume her if she did not go. The arm not carrying the bag snatched at the doll and the coat, the paper wrapping and letter slipping to the floor unnoticed.
Miss Carceri's words loomed over her head like soot-laden clouds swelling from the fury of the flames, the haughty disapproval, the deserved judgment of her own failures. She had been a fool, she realized, fingers digging into the fur and leather of the coat. The texture of it sent a bolt of ice down her spine. She could not face K'ile, or K'luha, or anyone else who came for her, even when she thought she might, after all these years, have wanted to. They had clawed open a hole, an old wound wrapped around keening isolation, and she knew of only one way to escape such a feeling.
She made for the door.
And there was nothing K'luha could do about any of what had transpired. She was just as useless here as she was with the tribe. So she did nothing, which was all she could do.
Not moving from where he stood, K'ile watched K'piru. he felt like iron spikes had been driven through his joints, a red-hot rod stabbed into his gut. "Please take care of yourself, K'piru," he said, and muttered, "I'm sure you're going to do just fine."
Antimony fled blindly in a high panic, pushing through the door with the desperation of one fleeing a burning building. The action was irrational, childish, but she was not in a place to recognize that, just as she hadn't been amongst the sands, beneath the empty gaze of an absent god. She stumbled into the hall with all the self-awareness of a drunkard, turned one way and then the other. Long walls loomed menacingly in narrow, endless tunnels no matter which way she spun, and in the grain of their wood she saw faces twisted with pain, burnt nearly unrecognizable.
A small voice reminded her of Illira, who awaited her papers, her words, her excuses and reports, but the whole of it joined the flames threatening at her back and drove her forward through the hall, through the tavern, into the city streets. The brief thought of the repurcussions for these actions only served to push her further. The snow would hide her, she thought.
***
There was finally silence in the room as Luha and K'ile were left alone again. She felt the need to apologize, but somehow she felt like an apology would only serve to make things worse. She had managed to somehow ruin K'ile's reunion with Piru. And K'piru just ran like she had five years ago. Was family so torturous to her now? K'luha couldn't understand wanting to run from family. But she only knew now that she would probably never see K'piru again... and K'ile probably wouldn't see her either. And the latter was her fault for scaring K'piru away in the first place. She blamed herself, but she doubted that it made the situation any better to blame herself or voice that pain. She could only hope K'ile didn't blame her, and if he did that he would forgive her for it.
K'ile Tia just lingered where he stood, stock still and silent, for a few moments. And then he said, "I don't know what to do."
Luha peered up at K'ile's back, and pulled the blankets away from her face. "What did you do that last time she left?" she asked softly.
He turned and looked at a spot on the wall right next to K'luha. His face was a plain mask, like something an actor might wear to obscure their character. The flame of his hair was dim and still, his blue shivering subtly. "I don't remember. I think I just stopped being for a few years."
K'luha carefully lifted her hands and motioned for K'ile to come towards her. "Come. Sit."
The idea of moving in that moment was bizarre to K'ile. She might as well have asked him to lift Dalamud back into the sky. If he could move maybe he'd go after K'piru. He'd tried to once. He'd waited five to try again. He hadn't even told K'piru the things he'd waited five years to tell her. If he could move now maybe he would leave, too. K'ile could imagine himself walking out of that woman, carrying all of his pent up feelings with him.
Maybe if he were a little bit more like K'piru, he could just walk out and leave K'luha here and not come back. He would find someplace out there where he wouldn't have to deal with these things. "I hate that woman," he said. "She's the most selfish, cowardly person I've ever met. Maybe that's where K'ailia learned how to abandon people and pretend it's..."
K'luha felt her chest ache. He didn't hate K'piru. He probably wanted to with everything he had, but those promises he had made were still holding him back. She motioned with her hand again. She couldn't reach K'ile.Â
"K'ile... come here?" She asked softly again. There was no way to limp after him like she had before. She couldn't stop K'piru. And if he was going to go after her, she couldn't chase him either. All she could do was lay still, at the mercy of whatever torrent of emotions were assaulting him.
In a swift motion punctuated with a stubborn huff of air, K'ile moved as though cut free from iron bindings. He took two heavy steps towards the bed and turned his back on K'luha, dropping to the floor and leaning back against the bed.
It wasn't what she had really wanted, but at least she could reach him now. K'luha shifted herself over to the edge of the bed and place her hands softly on his shoulders. He could shrug her off he he wanted, but she wanted him to know that she was here.Â
"K'ile... I don't think I could ever make up for what K'piru meant to you, but I want you to know that I'm here for you. I always have been. Even when you didn't want me to be there five years ago, I'm going to be here to help you however I can. And I'm not going to run away anymore. I can't run anymore. So I'm going to be here. Okay?" She meant a lot of things both metaphorically and physically, but mostly she hoped that he understand what she was trying to say. And it was going to hurt if he pushed her away again, but K'luha was going to endure it.
"Meant," K'ile stated. "Not what she 'meant' to me anymore than what K'ailia 'meant' to you. It's what she means. She's not dead, she's just gone."
"I'm sorry... I meant... means...." K'luha replied quietly, casting her eyes downward. She had hoped that a grammar error would be his sole focus, but apparently it was. Just like K'piru was his sole focus most of the time. She loud out a long breath and bit her bottom lip.
![[Image: AntiThalSig.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179079766/AntiThalSig.png)
"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
