Fraxinea: Of Ash

By: Strange and Intoxicating -rsa-

Author Notes: Uh, I wanted to write an Ignis/Aranea and it still ended up being an Ignis/Noctis. Sorry, my bad.

Warnings: MASSIVE SPOILERS, Sex, Violence, Death, Childbirth is NOT fun, etc. Consider this my standard "this is depressing and potentially fucked up" bumper.

Aranea remembered her childhood vividly. She didn't speak of it, pretending like she was nothing but a lance for hire, yet when she laid her head down at night it was difficult to forget it.

She was supposed to be a Lady, born to a line of nobility in Accordo. She was born in water, would die in water. It was what the people of the small island nation believed; they thrived on the swirling, raging ocean. And one day, so far away when her body would give in and she was no longer of use, the kiss of the Hydraen would pull her into its embrace and bring her to her watery grave.

She was a Lady of the Water.

It was how those of her bloodline lived, it was how those of her bloodline died.

She was proud of it.

No.

She is proud of it.

And, like any good Accordian woman, she was given the promise of her three offerings upon her birth. It was tradition, even as the midwife pulled her from her mother, leaving the water of her birthing bath red like poppies laid out to fight against the current. Her mother gasped for breath but bit her lip until her teeth went through. Silence. Perfect silence.

(Aranea had always been fascinated by the silvery spiderweb across the bottom of her mother's mouth. It was why her mother had named her Aranea: A perfectly beautiful web of pain and memories.)

Fire.

Water.

Lances.

It was only after the midwife dripped her mother's blood onto her forehead was she passed to her father. He held her in his too-big hands and promised Aranea her mother's world, for she would be a Lady of the Water. She was to be Lady Aranea Maris, and he promised her his lance just as he had promised it to her mother long before.

If he could have, Aranea was pretty sure he would have given her them all.

But Accordian women were not simply given their offerings.

They were to be earned.

(Aranea earned her lance when she was twelve and she had to pull it from her father's dead hands and put it into the throat of his killer; the blood of the assassin's mixed with her father's as it stained her hands and yet she had no tears. How does one cry when there are not enough tears in all of Eos to comfort her?)

Aranea never forgot where she came from, but she did hide it.

After her father's death, a Lady Aranea Maris… it was too obvious. Anyone who went looking for a child with such a name would be able to trace her down with little issue; only those of the sea would ever dare to name themselves in Her name. Instead, she took the name of a dragon; the Highwind Dragons of Tenebrae would allow her safe passage between the lands.

She never found out who had sent the assassins to her father that day, though sometimes she would find herself wishing that she did know. It would be easier to blame the Nifs for it, but not everything could be pinned on them. Others no doubt would have wanted to snuff out those of Accordian blood, and her father had never supported Niflheim nor Lucis… and certainly not the attempts for democracy in Altissia.

Her mother stayed, and then her mother had died at fifteen. She was a Lady of the Water, a Lady of Hydraen. Yet she was more than that; she was a mother with fury and anger and the desperation to appease Leviathan.

A mother would give anything to protect her child.

She went into the deep waves as an offering, letting the roaring sea swallow her whole.

There was nothing left for Aranea in Accordo.

So, she wandered. It was simpler that way; she knew how to live on her own, and she knew that dragons of water and fire did not need the same things Ladies needed.

She was free.

When Niflheim did come to her at eighteen to offer her riches beyond her wonder in exchange for her lance, she did it with a half-hearted shrug. It had been weeks since she had eaten anything but meat she had cut from the tender bellies of roaming beasts or pulled out of the ground with her own bare hands. She slept under the stars in her small tent on rainy nights, the glow of the runes and the sounds of the daemons keeping her awake until the morning.

(She only admitted once that before the Eternal Night she couldn't sleep until the dawn crested the sky, her laugh hoarse as she whispered it against his chest. She wasn't sure he was awake until she felt his fingers run through her hair, catching on the tangles. He never said anything but she knew he didn't need to. There were no dawns, not anymore. Now… now she worked her body until it crashed and she could fall into the bliss of unconsciousness.)

Working with Niflheim had been the same as any other job, at first. She would do her missions and then leave. She didn't care about the why. It wasn't her job to think; it was her job to run her lance through anyone who got in her way. She would defend the Emperor, deliver top secret papers, but mostly it was the same as what it had always been.

Daemon hunting, monster smashing. She could do it blindfolded and half-asleep, and she was good at it.

No, not good.

Legendary.

And if she couldn't be a Lady of the Water, at least she could be a Lady of the Sky.

They called her Bahamut's Nightmare, and she liked it.

And so it went. She killed, she fought, she brought back pieces of what was left and went home to Gralea when it was done. She worked hard, bled red, and continued to stand long after the men around her would flop onto their backs like fish and die.

She was different, because she had her lance, she had her water, but she still needed to fight for her fire.

(The first time she met him was in the darkness of night and she hadn't known his name; he was just Pretty Boy's friend, and he had a lance that bit through the night and shattered the moonlight across its blade. He had managed to get a good swing at her, cutting off one of her braids, and she had snarled and laughed as she jumped into the sky.)

Ignis.

To ignite, to burn with passion and pain and fire.

Maybe it was her fault, her fixation with him. It was in his green eyes and the way he moved, with the grace of a trained killer and the devotion of a kicked puppy.

Aranea was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

It didn't take long into their journey through Steyliff Grove when she figured out that whatever was going on between the Lucis King and his Chamberlain was way above her paygrade. She had refused to sleep in the same tent as the three of them, preferring the comfort of the blankets wrapped around her waist as she stared up into the waters above. It was peaceful, a memory of Accordo and home.

And it was difficult for her to pretend like she couldn't hear the sounds coming from the tent; they were quiet, whispered words and slight pants, but Aranea had feared the night and its sounds for so long… this was nothing.

In the morning she simply smiled and crooned, "Good sleep, boys?"

She enjoyed how Pretty Boy's mouth gulped like a fish. Ignis, however, only raised one elegant eyebrow at her. He didn't dignify her with a response, though Pretty Boy just muttered a quick, "Yeah, sure. Whatever, Aranea."

The Chocobo was far more talkative, though if it were to her or her tits, she wasn't quite sure. He was light on the eyes, sure…. But Ignis?

Ignis was blood in water, fire boiling inside of her.

It was hard to deny that the next night she waited up and listened for the rustle inside their tent. When she heard the rocking of bodies and the sound of Ignis moaning, it was enough to make her slip her fingers into her panties and touch herself. She bit her lip hard enough for it to bleed, and for a moment Aranea wondered if it would leave a scar across her mouth, just like her mother had done to herself so long before.

(In the morning she downed one of those trashy elixirs that Pretty Boy made from energy drinks and choked on its syrupy flavor and the way it crackled like exploding batteries down her throat. It wasn't the first time she had felt that way, and no doubt it wouldn't be the last.)

Offerings were meant to be freely given, never taken.

Aranea knew that, but it didn't mean that a little part of her wondered if perhaps there had been a mistake when the midwife pulled her from the water.

She had never put a lot of faith into magic or prophecy, but she was still a child of Accordo, and sometimes… sometimes it was better to simply accept what the water of her birthing bath said.

It had yet to fail her.

And then Altissia fell.

She was glad she hadn't been there to see it, but later would regret it; she wondered if there would have been some chance for her to have helped with the civilians, helped with the Oracle, helped with Ignis.

It was amazing what boiling daemon blood could do to the soft, tender flesh that made up the eyes.

(She knew it was Ardyn when Ignis admitted to her that daemon blood smelled like rotting corpses mixed with engine grease. It was something that had taken months for Aranea to pinpoint down, though she had always thought it smelled more like burning Magitek soldiers…)

Aranea knew there was no way to go back to the past, and there was no way she could stay with Niflheim. Even before finding out about Pretty Boy's entourage, she knew she was going to say fuck it and officially pull away from the Empire. Too much had happened, too much blood… Even as a mercenary lance, she had her breaking point.

She wasn't entirely sure what was going on with the daemon pieces, but she didn't want to know…. And she didn't want to have anything to do with it.

It was too late though.

The light began to fade before they realized what they had done, before Aranea had realized what she had done. Her hands were bloody, too… How many pieces had she given to the Empire? How many arms and torsos and swords? How many times had she walked next to the Emperor and allowed him to continue to draw breath?

It took a year before the light had completely faded, and then it was nine full years of darkness.

Nine years of sleeplessness.

Aranea was a smooth killer, a lethal weapon against any and all who dared to not bow their neck. She was the Lady of the Sky… the Lady of Perpetual Darkness, the Lady of ... moonless nights and sunless days.

The water was dead.

It took time for Ignis to regain his footing after losing his sight, though Aranea knew that while his sense of sight was gone he had learned that hearing, truly listening, was of just as much importance.

In the ocean it was hard to open her eyes, but even as her ears clogged with water she knew that she could still hear the thrumming of life around her.

"If it's important, you'll hear it."

(Ignis would explain to her one night when it was too loud for Aranea to sleep that he had been such a terribly heavy sleeper before Noctis... Before Noctis had needed him after the Marilith attack, before he had given up his childhood for his Prince, before, before, before. And it was difficult for Aranea not to hate the Pretty Boy just a little for having taken away Ignis's chance to sleep through the sounds of the daemons ripping apart their world.)

The missions started off simple; a few books, a scroll, an artifact that may help him break Noctis from his Crystal.

Aranea knew they were foolish dreams held together with the faint promise of a morning with light.

Noctis wasn't coming back.

He was gone.

Yet Aranea said nothing as she explained the way down the tunnels to Ignis. She acted as his eyes and he acted as her ears, and while it took years of working together it did eventually become second nature. While Aranea could see the bubbling of the ground below their feet, Ignis could always hear it before it even crested the topsoil. They were a good team, Aranea with her lance and Ignis with a set of daggers he told her were gifts for his twentieth birthday from Noctis.

The lance was hard for him to use without his eyes, but he made due with his daggers.

She hated it; he was meant for the perfect arc of a lance, the way he would dance with it like a lover in the most intimate and intricate of movements. He would pull it through the air and turn with such a cadence that made the air sing.

And when Aranea mentioned it, Ignis would always sigh and call forth his lance from the ether. He would lay it at her feet, the weariness of their Eternal Night wearing down on his patience. "If you can wield it better than I can, then it would be best if you did so rather than natter on about it."

"Pretty Boy would take off my head if he were alive."

"He is alive."

"But he isn't here now, is he?" She always wanted to add that she was, but she was neither desperate nor lovesick. When the birthing bath made its sweet promise amongst the red blood and black gore it did not explain itself. It didn't whisper the future, but gave a glimpse of the possibilities.

"No, he isn't." And then he would stare at her, his dead, milky green eyes wide and unseeing yet perhaps knowing more than she dared to ever admit.

(Aranea tried to grab it only once. She was thrown back a dozen feet and into the nearby rock formation, the feeling of hot blood and pain twisting through her back. Ignis didn't even have the decency to look ashamed, and instead reached down to pick up the lance and twist it back into the ether. She had been foolish to think that she could take what had not been earned.)

Time was something that changed as the days faded into perpetual night, the Starscourge blocking out the twinkling stars.

Ignis told her that time was arbitrary, and she slowly began to understand when days and weeks and months morphed into comfortable silence as Ignis learned himself again and she got to learn him.

Maybe, just maybe, he had begun to learn her, too.

The first time he touched her as anything other than a comrade she had laughed, her voice deep and only on the edge of terror. She refused to allow it to spill over, to pull away the mask she had built with water and air. She wondered if he could hear the panicked lilt to her voice as he cupped her cheek, letting his fingers run over her trembling lips.

"That was rather forward of me," he had said and it took Aranea pinning him down and fucking his mouth with her tongue for him to realize that being forward was a language Aranea was fluent in. Apologies were whispers spoken in foreign tongues and she was far too practical to learn them.

She was no princess, no damsel in distress. She was a hunter, a warrior, a Lady of the Water.

She was Bahamut's Nightmare, and she would never let Ignis forget it.

So she curved her fingers into his back and felt him grind against her and then inside her, their bodies rutting together as the rocks under them dug into her skin. And she tried to pretend that sometimes Ignis wouldn't say his name like a benediction, but sometimes he would say her name, too.

Noctis had spent eight years in the Crystal and yet Aranea knew that another eight years or eighty years wouldn't change a damn thing.

She took what she could, felt what she could, and discarded the rest.

Aranea didn't call it love. She didn't call it anything, really.

Aranea understood sharp tips and blunt edges that made pulling out her lance all the more painful. She knew to twist as she withdrew, and so did Ignis.

He knew just how to fuck her, how to make her come undone with just the change of a tempo and the movement of his hips at another angle. His cock would press against her, his stomach flat against hers and she would tighten with every thrust until they both fell into each other.

(She had explained once that in Accordo, women were considered to be the fruit of Leviathan. Their tempers as wrathful and vengeful, as soothing and comforting, as the sea. In Accordo, women were blessed with the gifts that Lucis considered to be only bestowed upon men. And her mother, bleeding out in her birthing bath, had given her a gift no man could ever give. It was a gift of life that Aranea couldn't give, either.)

Some ladies were offered love, hope, motherhood.

Aranea had been the same as her own mother; she was Death, she was Weapon, she was Fire.

Aranea didn't know what it was about that night; there was nothing different about it than the previous nights where they would fuck and come and then Aranea would listen as Ignis fell asleep against her, whispering a name she had long ago learned she would never beat.

It wasn't fair, but that was alright.

He had made her gasp and moan with something so human and visceral that for just that night she had slept so peacefully that the sounds of the daemons did not dare to wake her from her slumber.

Before she drifted off she felt him rest his hand against her cheek, a show of emotion that he had never given her before. He kissed her knuckles and for a moment she felt something that had been so far away and then so close. His come was warm and sticky between her thighs, a reminder of whatever it was they had between them.

And she dreamed of fire and water, of twilight and dawn.

When she woke, he was already gone.

She knew it was a goodbye.

They didn't need words.

(Because she spoke in harsh truths and neither of them needed it.)

She trekked her way through the swarms of daemons back to Lestallum and met with Iris and Cor, asking with only mild distaste if they had heard something.

"We thought he would have told you," Iris whispered and looked away. "They… they left. Noctis, he…"

Aranea shook her head. She didn't want to hear anything else.

He was never hers to have; she didn't get to ask.

But she wanted to, just a little.

When the dawn rose on the third day, her hands had shaken as she allowed Iris to sob into her shoulder.

They had succeeded.

They took Talcott's truck, the engine thundering through a wasteland of barbed wire fences and ash. She watched the sun against the brilliance of the blue sky and it hurt.

The freedom to fly, to soar through the sweet morning winds came at the price of her sight.

(She pretended that it wasn't tears that blurred her vision. She tried, but she failed.)

They could only make it so far into the city before the truck could go no further. She followed Iris and Cor, both who seemed to know every entranceway into Insomnia. She wondered if they had tried infiltration before then, but she didn't ask. No one wanted to talk, anyway.

When the arrived at the Citadel, the warm sun burning at her back, Aranea raised her cheeks to the light.

Iris screamed and Aranea watched the Daemon Slayer, the Invincible Flower Shield fall like a rag doll to the ground at the foot of her brother's battered body. Aranea had known Gladio was big, but right then he looked like a broken child.

They left her there, clutching his head to her chest as she wiped away the blood and grime, sobbing like a little girl who had lost everything again and again.

Next was Prompto.

Goddamn Chocobo-ass. Aranea felt the vomit rise in her mouth as she saw his pale face, the black veins standing stark against his cheeks. They had known that the people made into MTs wouldn't be able to stand the light after the sun rose. It had been too long since they had seen the sun, too long.

Talcott stayed with him.

"I just… I can't. Don't make me go in there."

Aranea looked to Cor, then back to Talcott before nodding.

"We can do this." She wasn't sure her voice had ever sounded so weak, like a mewling kitten lost in a storm.

She took a moment to breathe, to remember that she had been offered three gifts.

Her father's strength.

Her mother's spirit.

Ignis's…

Aranea turned toward the Citadel and followed the blood smeared across the stone.

He had managed to make his way to the throne room, up the curling double stairs, and to Noctis's feet. Blind, alone, in excruciating pain: He did not give up until he had reached his goal.

Stubborn Ignis.

Foolish Ignis.

Selfish Ignis.

She had no right to hate them, and she didn't. She couldn't. She wanted to curse them both, to curse herself, to weep for the small child promised fire in her birthing bath and had received only the charred ashes of an ember that had burned too hot for another before being snuffed out in the darkness.

Yet Aranea was careful as she lifted his body, cradling his head to her breast as Cor removed the sword from King Noctis's chest. Ignis was still hers, in at least this way. Noctis would never get to see how peaceful Ignis looked then.

It was by chance that she caught sight of the photograph and she was quick to rescue it from the blood splashed across the stone steps.

(After she had washed Ignis's body in the bathroom on the ground floor, noting the curve of every muscle, the color of every bruise and the nailmarks across his back she hadn't given him, she pulled out that photo. It was old, worn at the edges, but Aranea couldn't help but to smile at the way they all looked so peaceful and happy. Hammerhead's sign, Gladio's single scar, Prompto's shit-eating grin, the way Noctis and Ignis had their fingers barely brushing and yet it was perhaps the most intimate thing she had ever seen. And she didn't cry, though she wanted to. She didn't tear the picture to pieces, though she wanted to. She tucked the photo into her side pocket and continued to prepare him.)

They were all sons of Lucis. They should have been entombed, like the men who had all come before them… but the few meager spells they had kept safe for emergencies had disappeared like whispers of smoke when Noctis had died.

If they could not freeze the bodies, then…

Then they would bury them.

Aranea had dug a grave six feet deep and three feet wide, because if Ignis wasn't given the chance to be with Noctis on Eos, she sure as fuck would do her best to make sure that they were together in death.

She offered to help Iris dig, but the girl only wiped her dirt-covered hands across her red, burning forehead and weakly whispered, "No."

Aranea understood.

It was no funeral fit for a King and his Crownsguard, but it would be enough.

When they arrived back to Lestallum, Aranea was sure to lock herself in her room at the Leville. She did not leave until she realized something was wrong. She wasn't bleeding, and it seemed almost as though the Hydraen had finally decided that she had earned her final offering.

Fuck the Hydraen and Her gifts, because Aranea didn't ask for them.

She didn't want it.

(She had never wanted anything more than she wanted it.)

It was painful in a way that nothing had prepared her for. It wasn't just the feeling of rolling on the waves without a net to catch her; it was in the way her body gave her pain from breathing, made her ache, made her exhausted down to her bones. There weren't many doctors, certainly none from what was left of Accordo, and Aranea did not know the traditions or the offerings or how to rip a baby from her insides in the water.

How was she supposed to do it alone?

How could he do this and then die?

Because Aranea knew that when it slid out of her like a gush of hot blood and roaring pain, she would love it and worship it, because it was him and she wasn't sure if she could—

She was Bahamut's Nightmare. She was the Lady of the Sky, Lady of the Perpetual Darkness, Lady of the Water.

She was Aranea Highwind.

She could do it.

("I can't do this, Ignis. Leviathan… please. I can't do this on my own.")

And when the time came and she screamed and cried out for Ignis and for her mother. Iris had tried to bring her comfort but nothing could take away the burning agony ripping through her with hot daggers. She had killed a thousand Red Giants and yet there had never been such agonizing pain. Death seemed so much more simple, and yet she knew if she went into the Beyond he wouldn't be waiting for her.

She was alone.

She had always been alone.

Aranea felt something against her scalp like a soothing hand and just for a moment in the breathless daze of her body constricting and pushing one last time she could understand why the Accordians believed in the Hydraen and worshiped Her waters.

Silence.

Perfect silence.

Aranea could see Her in the ripples against the water as the whisper of words caressed her cheek, and there was no pain. In that brief moment of clarity Aranea understood.

Fire.

Feather.

Phoenix.

With one last shudder of blood gushing between her legs, Aranea watched Leviathan disappear and sound return as she slipped under the edge of the water, allowing her ears to fill.

Aranea could still hear her baby's first cries, the sharp wail cutting through everything like she had taught Ignis so long before.

If it was important, he would hear it.

If it was important, she would hear it.

And though it was hard, perhaps the hardest thing she had ever done, Aranea lifted her hands out for the small, struggling baby in Iris's hands.

"Fraxinea," Aranea breathed against the little girl's skull, her pale brown hair tickling against her nose.

At twelve she had been offered her father's lance. At fifteen she had been offered her mother's water. At thirty-nine she had been offered Ignis's fire.

Fraxinea.

(Like a phoenix burning in the smoldering embers of a dying fire, it would always be reborn in ashes.)

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