All of a sudden during the writing of this installment, it occurred to me that there were just so many avenues I could take—and my brain may have exploded a little. I went in a few different directions with this and then had to pare it down so that it was still faithful to the first installment which I wrote many moons ago. Hopefully it's all still continuous—and sorry if it's not :)

And can I just say…OMG OMG OMG OMG. (yes, I get excited by my own fic sometimes, lol)

Enjoy!

Wine and Consequence

The following morning dawned to a spectacular sunrise. Rydia rolled onto her side, and blinked at the light spilling across her room. The burgundy curtains were drawn wide, as she had forgotten to close them the day before, and she glared at the accursed portal where cheerful birdsong had begun to filter through. For several minutes, all she could do was sit and wait for her head to wrap itself around the idea of being awake—a difficult accomplishment for one with a pounding temple and burning throat.

The minutes ticked away, until she plunged face down onto her mattress, groaning occasionally. Snippets of memories were returning to her, slowly completing the chain of events from the previous evening, and she wasn't fond of the picture they were painting.

Had she really? She had—she really had. She pulled a pillow over her head and rolled back and forth like a tantrum prone child, screaming into the soft down-filled blankets beneath her.

What had she been thinking? She had blurted it out—how she felt about him—and she felt a blush rage across her cheeks and creep down her neck. He probably thinks I was talking in my sleep. He probably thinks I'm insane.

It took the entirety of an hour before she had reclaimed any dignity, washed up, dressed, and felt ready enough to brave castle Baron's dining hall to face any of its occupants—one in particular.

She walked with stiff steps, a feeling of dread settling onto her shoulders like heavy weights. She imagined a dozen different conversations in a dozen different ways, but each one ended precariously in a sea of excuses. She was about to grasp the handle of the dining hall doors, when someone else intercepted her hand and pulled her aside. She pinched her brows together in protest of the brisk movement, but when she saw who it was that was detaining her, her heart beat double-quick—a step ahead of her thoughts.

It was Edge who stood before her. He was wearing a shirt that hugged his lean frame attractively and he'd rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, much at ease. His silver hair was carelessly tousled, and despite his eyes appearing a little more tired than usual, he was a spectacular sight. But then—he usually was. Rydia nervously licked her lips, eyes wide. She was starting to feel as though her lungs had shrunk and a strange buzzing had begun to fill her ears.

"We need to talk," he said, his tone apologetic. His behavior reminded her of the dance floor, and she was finding this more than a little suspicious.

"What—now?" she asked, her mouth feeling like it was wadded with cotton. She hoped to turn away and reach the safety of witnesses, but his hand still held her in place, unrelenting. And then it occurred to her, the anger from the previous afternoon at the wedding ceremony, and her gaze fixed on him like an archer sighting a target. "So now you decide that we need to talk?" she fumed.

He rolled his eyes, sighing, and his fingers released their grip on her. "Do you have any idea—" he started, and then stopped himself, nodding to Yang and his wife as they passed by the two of them with inquisitive smiles. "Not here," he said, taking herby the hand again and leading her down the corridor and into one of the castle's many courtyards.

Rydia realized it to be the same courtyard she had sought refuge in the night before, and the light lancing into the garden stung her eyes.

"What?" Rydia groaned when he let go of her and took a few steps away.

She squinted at him, and saw he was looking at her with sympathy; which at the moment, she found to be extremely patronizing.

"Alcohol really does not sit well with you," he observed, looking at her from head to toe.

Rydia frowned. "Did you bring me here to mock me?"

His smile was fleeting, rueful. "That isn't why."

"What, then? To bring up-" the words clotted on her tongue all of a sudden. She took a deep breath. "Edge, what I said last night…"

"That isn't why, either," he added hastily. "Though—"

"I don't want to talk about that," Rydia interrupted him, wrapping her arms around her waist, embarrassed.

He exhaled sharply through his nose, almost laughing, and strode further into the garden as if he'd suddenly changed his mind and had decided to avoid her. Again. Exasperated, Rydia followed him.

"You asked me a question last night," he finally told her, contenting himself to lean against one of the garden's vine-draped columns. He was giving her one of his signature, piercing looks—the kind that always left her feeling exposed and a little off-balance. She knew he was studying her for some sort of reaction and wondered what answers he had already found—writ across her face.

She leaned against a neighboring column, but her gaze drifted to the gravel path between them, and she was curious if she really had the nerve to ask him the same question twice.

"Yes, I did," she replied, furtively lifting her eyes to his face.

He grimaced—then offered her a tight smile—and Rydia imagined it was because he was caught between wanting to ask a question of his own or to give her an answer. She waited. It had been months since they'd spoken properly, after all.

"You left," he finally said, as if this explained everything. It didn't come as an accusation, but rather, as a statement of fact. Nonetheless, Rydia felt a stab of conviction through her heart. It was only the truth, after all.

Rydia watched a bee climb into one of the flowers that graced the vine beside her, wishing she could be like the bee and fly away from this particular part of the conversation. Inevitably, the source of her distraction did fly away, but she remained, left to devise a response.

"Of course I left," she said, daring to look at him, at his stung expression. "I didn't have a good enough reason to stay."

"Were we mortal humans too boring for you?" he flippantly asked, and Rydia was offended by the implication that it was arrogance that had baited her footsteps to the Feymarch's door.

"I—" she blurted out, struggling to find words. "You think it was because I didn't value our friendship, that I left?"

Edge crossed his arms. "The war ended," he told her. "We were home. The five of us were no longer tethered together, but at least some of us managed to send word to each other. You, on the other hand..."

"I didn't vanish," she objected. "I told you that you might not see me for a while."

"That was when we assumed you'd be returning to Mist, not to the Underworld. Not to the Feymarch."

"You're angry with me for going home?" she asked, incredulous.

"The last time the Feymarch welcomed you, it claimed ten years of your life. What if you had lived an entire lifetime in the moment it took me to blink and I missed it? I never would have heard a word about it."

Rydia stared at him. "You thought—" and she laughed. "You thought I was going to age so quickly in the time we were apart that you wouldn't recognize me by the time I returned? Are you really so vain?"

He drew his brows together. "It was never the age that bothered me, Rydia—although, how long has it really been? A year? Two?—it was the time itself," he told her irritably.

Rydia hadn't noticed it before, but they had both abandoned their former positions and were now standing near each other—so close as to be touching.

"I left," she said deliberately, "because there was no other home for me to return to. All of you had your kingdoms, your politics, and all I had were ghosts. I didn't want to be the object of everyone's pity. I didn't want to spend my months as someone else's guest, and I didn't want to spend it among burnt out husks or silent graves, either."

She was looking up at him and he was looking back at her with equal intensity.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked. "Were you hoping none of us would notice you were gone?"

"I was never going to stay there forever—and I sent letters," she argued.

"Months later," he pointed out, "Just long enough to make us wonder if you'd ever deign to re-join society," he said with a little heat in his voice.

Rydia felt tears prick the corners of her eyes. "You could have asked," she told him.

"I could have—asked you what?" he inquired, confusion evident on his face.

"You could have asked me to stay," she blurted out.

He looked at her strangely. "You just said—"

"I know what I said," she replied, angrily waving the discrepancy aside. "But it was always different with you. You never saw me as the lost little girl as everyone else did," she reflected. "My hands might have been useful in Eblan, where they otherwise would not have been elsewhere. Besides, we had left so many conversations unfinished between us, and I-" Rydia forced herself to an awkward halt, sensing that she had said too much.

Edge was staring at her dumbly. "If I had just asked?" he sputtered at her, his handsome expression scandalized. "I didn't realize you were expecting an invitation. I thought you had returned to the Feymarch to avoid the rest of us—to avoid me," he added as an aside.

"To avoid you?" she asked and felt her cheeks begin to redden. She hadn't seen him since the day they'd all parted ways in Mysidia, nor had she heard much from him since. It had been part of the driving force for her to approach him at the wedding in the first place. "I received letters from everyone else," she realized aloud. "Everyone but you. Just who is avoiding who, here?"

Edge sighed, and it rang of regret and exasperation. "We did a hell of a job of this, didn't we?" he asked, running a hand through his hair where it remained remarkably perpendicular to his scalp.

Rydia sighed as well, only she wasn't sure where this had all been going anyway. She did have a sudden acute awareness of how close they were standing and how her stomach felt like it was suspended on wings.

"So," she forced out after a moment of awkward silence. "Where does this leave us?" she asked.

"Here. In this garden," he observed wryly.

She gave him a flat look, but felt a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth all the same. "Well, yes," she answered.

He looked back at her thoughtfully, and the tension seemed to have melted out of them to be replaced by something else entirely. Rydia felt pressure in the air, an expectant sort of thrumming in the atmosphere of the garden, and she wondered what it could mean.

"We never did have that dance," Edge reminded her after another pause, a playful smile on his lips.

Her own smile was hesitant in return, and she was surprised he would extend another invitation after she had turned him down the night before. It seemed a little absurd, but she shyly gave him her hand, amused by the offer. He stepped closer, wrapping his fingers around hers, and drew her in so close that her nose brushed against the fabric of the loose shirt he was wearing. Their proximity made the tips of her ears burn, and she hoped her blush hadn't spread all the way down her neck again. There had been enough blushing for one day.

He invented his own rhythm—he had always been masterful in the art of combat—and Rydia shouldn't have been surprised at him being masterful in the art of dance as well. He led her through a few sweeping steps, occasionally throwing her weight into turns before pulling her back again.

It felt good to be with him, and to have aired at least some of their frustrations—their miscommunications—to each other. Rydia felt that she had re-claimed her friend and former companion. And yet, there was also—

They had stopped moving, and startled, Rydia gazed up at Edge to find his eyes were searching hers. He brought a hand to her cheek and the feeling of his touch was electric on her skin. She continued to watch him, her breath hitching rapidly in her throat. What was this feeling?

Before she could even blink, he'd moved so close that she felt his breath on her lips, and then his kiss. It was brief but exquisite and she took in his scent—like cedar and warm earth, of far distances traveled. In the eighteen years of her life, Rydia had never been kissed before, and she found this to be an unexpected but not unwelcome turn of events.

"You said you didn't have a good enough reason to stay," he murmured against her lips. "Was this enough to change your mind?"

Rydia took in a shaky, startled breath, but grinned, quite unable to stop. "I'd say it's a definite step in favor of staying," she replied, hoping giddily that he might give her more reasons like the first.

"I'll assume that was a yes," he said, and brought their lips together again, teasing her with soft kisses, until she giggled, pulling just far enough away to look into his striking gray eyes.

"I said you could ask, but I never promised I'd stay," she laughed; not sure at all how she should really react to this entire situation.

It was his turn to laugh, and Rydia looked up at him quizzically. "What?" she asked.

His eyes sparkled with mirth. "And here I was just wondering whether or not there should be wine at our wedding."

"Our—what?" Rydia's spine involuntarily straightened and her mouth dropped open from pure outrage.

"If my first attempt at convincing you wasn't enough," he grinned at her, and his expression had become rather roguish.

Rydia arched a brow. "Now that is presumptuous," she protested, but he had leaned down to capture her lips in another kiss, this one more prolonged, more fiercely Edge than the others. She was already becoming quite intrigued by this "dance" of theirs, and now she found herself being lost in his attentions, enjoying his closeness.

When they'd paused for air, she gave him a pointed look. "Edward Geraldine, you are the most—the most insufferable man I know—and you are getting far too ahead of yourself."

He was now laughing into her hair. "You have to admit—at least it was clever."

Rydia pursed her lips and slipped out from under his chin to give him the hardest glare she could manage under the circumstances. Inevitably her scowl twisted into a grin. "That," she said evenly. "Was clever, but not nearly clever enough."

"So difficult," he groaned at her, resigned to resting his forehead against hers.

Rydia sighed, amused. "Would you still find me as interesting if I wasn't?"

He paused, considering. "I suppose if you weren't, I'd have to settle for someone equally frustrating. Cid has a daughter who I hear has quite the persona—"

Rydia swatted him hard in the shoulder. "I'll stay," she relented with another sigh and he flashed her a winsome grin.

"But don't you dare think I'll forgive you for this any time soon," she warned him, smiling, and poked his chest with an accusing finger.

He kissed the tip of her nose and chuckled. "Of course not—but it was still worth the attempt."

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A/N:

Well…there you have it, friends. The conclusion to Emboldened ;)

I kind of fell in love with this scene and really had fun writing it :)

We will ignore, however, that during the writing of this chapter, I had an arachnid encounter that ended in a panic attack and high pitched screaming, and focus instead on the delightful fuzzy feelings inspired by a love come full circle (IT'S STILL SOMEWHERE IN MY HOUSE OH MY GAAWD I'M NEVER GOING IN MY BASEMENT AGAIN).

Hope you enjoyed it, and for any more Edge/Rydia fixes? Well…you'll just have to read some of the later chapters of WoTC because that's where they're going to be :)

~Myth