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There were no alchemical work orders to handle. He’d finished them all.
There were no leveplates available. Other adventurers had taken already taken all the local ones.
Even the local people seemed to have been at ease for the most part. It’s boring. Franz was left with just his thoughts and himself sitting in the Fallgourd inn. It wasn’t as a bad thing as much as it was a lack of something to keep his mind off other thoughts. It was these quiet moments that made life in Eorzea the most difficult.
Where was he going? What was he planning to do? How would any of this get him home? In these quiet, peaceful moments, he wanted to scream. Yell. Cause a scene. If not him, then someone else. It didn’t particularly matter as long as a distraction was made.
But he didn’t. Nor did any others around him. And he continued to drown in his thoughts, only interrupted by the occasional chirp of a bird or splash of water.
But even pushing thoughts on Garlemald aside, there were plenty of other concerns. His time in Eorzea had seen plenty of mishaps and accidents. He’d been responsible for unprovoked attacks and deaths. There were plenty of them when he’d first arrived. When the only option to survive was to steal and murder. When the only work he could get were petty mercenary jobs that one could not subsist on. When he didn’t even have a name to go by. Where every day was clouded by a haze until the next and the one after had already passed. Concealed by a mask he swore to never wear again.
And then there were the specific incidents. Times when he’d gone after people out of petty revenge. It was odd to think that out of all the people he’d encountered at the  time, that Franz had chosen to live with people he’d sworn to kill not even a year before. But perhaps that was out of the feelings of guilt he felt then. Of the life he saw burned into his own as it passed. Of the only son of barely relevant highborn Ishgardian family. He’d taken away their future. Or the possibility of it. The elezen man had already ran from his home and across the cities. All Franz could do was take from those experiences.
He took the man’s name, crafting a makeshift one for himself. He took the man’s job, providing basic alchemical services only by mail. He took the man’s cottage, hidden away in the Black Shroud. One could even argue he’d taken the man’s friends. What few he had, at the least.
What was there to even give back? News  to the man’s family their son was dead? He supposed they assumed the Calamity was responsible. There was little reason to tell them otherwise, even if a certain Lalafell demanded he should.
Perhaps that is what he did best. He simply continued to drag on, weighed down by what he’d done and what he’d failed to do. Could he really call himself the same person anymore? He’d pushed those who would listen away and secluded himself from the rest, all the while telling himself it was for the best. That they should live their own lives separate from his. That they were better off. His loneliness was of his own making.
