Chapter Text
Sunlight streams through the open curtains. Colette hums a gentle tune that Lloyd only partially listens to, his thoughts Elsewhere. They’re curled up in Lloyd’s bed, Lloyd leaning against the wall and Colette’s head in his lap. She’s mostly propped on the leg he has folded under her, his other leg sandwiched between the wall and her body. He idly plays with her hair with one hand. His other is clenched firmly between her fingers.
In Colette’s other hand, she grips Zelos’ dormant core crystal. It’s still grey and lifeless.
“Hey, Colette?” Lloyd says.
She stops humming, leaning her head back to look up at him. “Hmm?”
Lloyd sighs, having thought only through getting her attention in the process of the conversation he wants to have. The question he wants to ask isn’t exactly easy, either, so that makes it even more difficult. Gentle curiosity pushes across their ether link, and Lloyd brushes Colette’s bangs back as he mulls over the words.
“I… understand if you still aren’t up for talking about it,” Lloyd says, sending Colette a gentle smile, especially as she breaks eye-contact with him and the curiosity in their link is immediately drowned by unease. “But… I just… I want to know what happened to Zelos.” The worry eats at his chest, and Colette probably feels an echo of that, easy. Lloyd shrugs, letting out a slow breath. “I can’t really help him—or you—if I don’t know what happened, and I want to help.”
Colette doesn’t answer right away. She ducks her head down, tucking her chin against her chest. She’s trembling, just a little, grip tightening on her brother’s core crystal.
“It’s okay if you don’t wanna talk about it, still,” Lloyd assures her, mustering all his patience. He wants to know but he doesn’t want to upset her, and like—he hasn’t really gone into details about what Miang put him through, either, so. “It can wait.”
“…no,” Colette says, softly. She takes a deep breath, unease tightening into resolve. “You should know. But… if you don’t mind, it might be easier if I just…” She yanks his hand gently towards her core crystal, and obediently he presses his fingers against it. He feels her ether gather for a data transfer.
He closes his eyes in anticipation, not that it’s going to matter much.
The images flood his vision.
Zelos, eyes vacant, sword blazing. A voice, gentle, intrusive: “You must be so exhausted.” Endless white interrupted by little black boxes. Zelos, motionless, in Miang’s lap. Tears in his eyes and pain in his arm, Zelos’ core crystal clutched to his chest as he watches Miang tremble, as he screams: “I asked for this! Because death would have been better than the hell I was already—”
Colette yanks his hand off her core crystal, breathing harshly. Lloyd turns his head away, blinking rapidly as his mind tries to catch up with all that was just dumped on him. Oh. Oh Architect. Rage boils in his belly at Miang, but louder than the rage is an overwhelming sadness, because Colette…
Shame beats in her core, and she shifts like she’s gonna pull away from him entirely, curling in on herself. She’s turned her head so that all her hair has fallen to hide her face. Lloyd takes a shuddering breath, horror washing over him as he processes all of what Zelos went through, but Colette trembling in his lap is hard to ignore and he knows, oh he knows, it’s more than what Miang did to Zelos that haunts her.
“Sorry, sorry,” she mumbles, scared like she hasn’t been since he first found her. “It’s—I’m fine. Really I’m fine. Please don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, Colette,” Lloyd protests, over her fear. He wraps her up in all of his love, tugging her more thoroughly into his arms, until he can tuck her head against his chest. He holds her as tight as he can, having no idea what else to do in the wake of her despair, the gaping chasm that is the past she refuses to talk about, and no wonder why.
(An image from her dreams, an image that wound up in that package along with everything else, flickers in his mind. Back rigid cold chair shards of an emerald core crystal on the table. Peace and certainty and hunger, even though a decision like this would have made anyone else weak in the knees.
But there’s a point, in the depths of despair, where you just stop caring. Death may as well take you. It couldn’t be much worse.)
“I’m fine now, I’m fine, really,” Colette protests, crying into his shirt. She clings to the fabric the same way shame clings to her core and won’t let go. He holds her tighter. “Really it hasn’t been that bad since—then. Since Martel. I’m—I’m fine, I’m happy, I’m okay. Zelos is- is the one you should be worried about, he’s the one who—”
“Shh,” Lloyd tells her. He pets her hair, kisses her crown. “Just… don’t say anything. You don’t have to apologize.”
“I’m fine, now, I really am!”
Maybe she is, but that doesn’t change the fact she wasn’t, the fact that he never really knew. Lloyd wishes he could reach into the past and heal all Colette’s wounds himself, but all he can do is hold her now, hold her and pour his love into her, so she can’t possibly forget it.
“I know you are,” he whispers into her hair. “And I’m so proud of you.”
No offense to Zelos, or anyone else, but. Colette’s probably the bravest blade he knows.