Chapter Text
He Sees her standing over a shallow grave; he knows not to whom it belongs. He knows only that it is someone important based on the amount of flowers tossed onto the coffin alone; by the oily outlines of what feels like dozens of silhouettes surrounding her. The details aren't always so clear on the first Seeing, which ordinarily wouldn’t concern him, but something in his gut troubles him about this; he does and, paradoxically, does not want to know more.
More, as it always does with the ‘gifts’ the Nine lavish him with, comes regardless of willingness to accept, or consent.
The next time he Sees, their daughter is there, standing slightly behind her, all grown up. He is pretty sure he is too; older, grey streaks in his once dark oak hair and in the beginnings of the short beard on his face. The air smells like petrichor, rain drops tracking slowly down her cheeks in lieu of the tears that she stubbornly refuses to let fall. His arm is looped around hers.
A bell chimes. A gun salute rings out. Someone starts singing; at first high and pure, then a deep choir of baritone joins in, a haunting dirge in a language he doesn't know the words of. The next day, long after the vision ends, he finds himself humming that same, melancholy tune absentmindedly as he toils together with Ikora in her private study, both of them still trying to figure out the Prophecy and how best to contain the impacts of III’s death on Earth.
"That song… it sounds so sorrowful," she comments to him, sparing him half a glance of concern from the datapad she was reading, her other eye watching their daughter as she carefully bounces her on her knee while she works. "Something from your time?"
He blinks, anchors himself back in the present, humming coming to an abrupt halt. He rubs his Nine-touched eye, feigning tiredness as if that were ever an act he needed to put on these days, before offering the Warlock a tight-lipped smile.
"Something like that," he lies. He doesn't have the heart to tell her what he really Saw. He's not sure how he ever can. It is probably one of the few things he hates about being the Emissary: Seeing how everything ends before it has a chance to truly begin, quite often without meaning to.
That night, when they finally turn in, he Sees her again, clearer this time. The rain is coming down in sheets, like scarves of mist. Still, she stands in vigil over a covered grave now, the crowd dispersing one by one until only they remain. Even Aster has left, something about going home to her own children; their grandkids. He feels the faint echo of a hand clutched lightly on his bicep; the hushed 'Look after mom' susurrating in his ear. The phantom familial love lingering long after the absence makes itself known, before it, too, vanishes into the oil canvas vestiges of the crowds and rain like everything, everyone, had ahead of it.
He reaches forward, hand squeezing the dark purple, almost black cloth of Ikora’s shoulder in comfort as the last melancholy notes of the song fade, whispering into the ever worsening squall. He wants to say something, anything at all, to stay the grief wracking the heart of the woman who held his own. God, how he would move Heaven and Earth to fix this for her if he could, wade through the burning depths of Hell, be gladly torn apart by the Nine to never see his corazòn, pillar of strength, normally unbreakable hallowed other half, fracture like this again. But he knows it does not work this way, could never work that way. Compassionate platitudes will not fix this; nothing ever would.
"Mi cielo," he instead chooses to address her quietly, gently, as though talking any louder would shatter the world further than it already has been. "We should head home. Before this weather gets any worse."
She turns her head to face him then, eyes red and puffy. Her face is soaked, but he knows instinctively it isn't just because of the rain this time. But even that is not enough to prepare him when she collapses onto her knees and into the dirt without warning, the most inhuman, mournful wail escaping her lips as she vents her anguish to the storm riddled sky that seemed hell bent on weeping with her. Even in the vision, he feels his heart stop, torn apart by the torment she is going through. He finds himself freezing, uncertain how to react, and oh, how he hates himself for it, for how powerless he feels.
She ends up breaking down sobbing for several minutes, head pressed into her knees as she pounds fruitlessly against the fresh-laid dirt. Only then, right on the border of her distress becoming too much for him to abide, do his muscles seem to finally unlock, and he crouches down to her level, hugging her close from behind as she works the raw grief out of her system. He is acutely aware of how feeble the comfort he provides is, but what else can he do except hold her shattered heart, until it can finally bear the pain and beat once again on its own?
When he wakes, tears sting his eyes, and the pillow is soaked in saline that slowly turns the fabric to salt. With effort, he transmutes it back to linen again, grateful it was just salt this time, and not something stupid like the one time he turned his bed to platinum. His ears perk up when he still makes out soft crying, and realises it is their daughter that has woken him. Soundlessly, not wanting to interrupt Ikora from her own rest, he leaves the bed to go tend to her.
If nothing else, it is a welcome distraction from the visions he keeps having.