Essek Thelyss didn't know who Esther Shaw was, but Esther knew Essek… or, at the very least, she had thought she did.
WHAT: Esther considers the memories she's had of recent. WHERE: The Shaw household, specifically the living room. WHEN: Late morning of April 6. WARNINGS: Spoilers through C2E99. Some dialogue is lifted from the episode and presented out of order for dramatic effect. 😉 STATUS:Complete!
The memory had come a couple nights prior. While Esther hadn't had the same emotional reaction to this one as the last visit she'd had from Essek Thelyss, the events that had transpired wouldn't leave her mind. They had left her distracted, unfocused as she tried her best to accomplish whatever menial task she had found to occupy her time, none of it ever enough to also occupy her mind.
She had known that simply signing her name again and again in marker on the ARCs meant for social media giveaways that had been delivered to her home wouldn't be nearly enough to keep herself busy, but it was what she had sat down to do. And as she marked the dedication page of one more proof with another flourish, Esther found herself pausing. Her head tipped forward and she closed her eyes.
It was so easy to slip back into those events, perhaps because she had done this too many times in the last days. The air was salty as they were surrounded by other ships and the Lucidian Ocean itself. Though the sky around the Mighty Nein's ship was dark, the faces of the group he had come to care about were as clear as ever through Essek's drow eyes.
"How does it feel to see him in chains and not you?"
"Honestly? Freeing."
Esther set the marker down, lifting her hand to press her fingers to her temple.
"Whenever you finish what you're doing, just let me know. We can talk in a more safe environment about the tangled web that all of these people have built."
"These people? It seems like you spun a thread or two yourself, Essek."
"I do not exclude myself from these statements."
Esther's brow furrowed, her fingers pressing harder into the side of her head.
"Well, I have to take care of a few loose ends and ensure that all of this can be laid to rest."
"What are their names?"
"It's not 'their names'. Not people. I just have some business to tend to -- and then maybe I can take a breath for the first time in months."
Esther's eyes opened and she straightened, leaning back against the front of the couch from the position she had taken up on the floor. Opening her eyes did nothing to shield her from the expressions on the faces of the people surrounding Essek. Suspicion. Mistrust. Uncertainty. How different it was now with the Essek's secrets that mattered most laid bare for them all to see. He had always known there had been a sliver of wariness from some of the members of their party where he was concerned, but it was obvious now that he had done his job well. They had begun to trust him and he had started to revel in that -- not as the Bright Queen's Shadhowhand or as a traitor to his nation, but as a young elf that had never had people he could consider being able to trust himself, people he could, at the end of the day, call his friends.
In the end, that was what hurt Esther's heart and mind most about all of this business. Yes, there was a part of her that felt betrayed by Essek. After having him in her dreams for so long, she had thought that he'd truly known him. In many ways, his confession to the Mighty Nein of his dealings with certain members of the Cerberus Assembly and the part that he played in the stirring of the pot that led to a war that killed thousands felt like as much a betrayal to her as it was to the people he felt this newfound kinship with. Essek Thelyss didn't know who Esther Shaw was, but Esther knew Essek… or, at the very least, she had thought she did.
But, no. What had truly come to hurt her most was Essek's guilt when he looked at those faces that she could so easily replace with the faces of people she had met and come to care about and even love since her arrival to Dunhaven. It didn't matter that Essek's actions weren't her own. All Esther could feel was her own guilt compounded with his own, a weight that was almost unbearable on her shoulders at times.
The only respite she had was the support from Chase. His unwillingness to shift the blame of Essek's actions onto Esther meant more to her than she could begin to put to words. Perhaps it would have been unfair for him to have done so in the first place, but for as real as Essek's emotions felt to her, she wasn't sure if she would have been able to blame him, either. The same went for the others. It felt too easy to place Beauregard's obvious suspicion and complete lack of trust onto Mica's face or the veiled anger of Veth's onto Nat. Part of that was Esther's ever overactive imagination running off without her, but it was also thanks to Essek's heavy regret and shame.
It was that regret and shame that inspired the small bit of hope that Esther did feel. She wasn't sure it was coming from the right place, given the actions he'd taken and the number of lives he had changed and ended. No one that he felt was undeserving had been hurt by his plans, but Essek and Esther held very different definitions of undeserving.
His regret was hinged on the Mighty Nein, a group of people he hadn't predicted to come barging into his life and throw a wrench into all of his carefully laid plans from the moment they had arrived in the Bright Queen's court and he'd watched Caleb lift one of the beacons as a bargaining chip for their lives. They had undid one of Essek's perceived wrongs and from that moment forward he'd had to entangle his life with theirs for the sake of making sure they didn't undo any of the others. But then he had come to like them and maybe even care for them and suddenly there were truly undeserving people in the fray.
It wasn't enough, in Esther's mind. But Essek was raised in a certain way in a specific sort of world. He was, as Veth had put it, a broken person. His choices were his own, though, and Esther could only hope that the proximity he was now in to a group of people who seemed to at least try to be good would change him. She'd witnessed it already.
"If you're interested, we can still do good things together."
Esther blew out a sigh, picking the marker up once more. Good things. Stranger things had happened.