On grief, love, and being dark knights
(Warning: spoilers for Stormblood and the dark knight quest line up ahead)
Most of the time whenever I have to replay the job quests on every alt I play, I don't usually skip cutscenes, unless they just feel really boring in some way (coughpaladincough). At this point I feel like I must have gone through them more than 10 times already over the span of half a decade, but when you're someone with a very vivid working imagination and go into the same story with a character that has an entirely different personality than your previous one, you get a lot of fresh perspective.
But if you tell me that I can only choose one job quest to experience in its entirety and the rest is forced to be condensed into a summary of events, I'd choose dark knight without question. Its reputation of being one of the best job quest lines in the entire game is well-deserved, and I never get tired of going through it — especially if we're talking about the Stormblood quest line.
I like to think the Stormblood portion of the dark knight quests explore the vulnerability of the human heart in more ways than one; specifically, the exploration of grief, longing, the desire to say words that were left unsaid. Throughout the entire quest line you explore how grief manifests in different people — Millie's wish to uphold her cousin's dream, Lowdy's acceptance of her fate, Sidurgu's desire to find closure with his master, and Gallien's longing to go back home. And at the end of it all, your character confronts their own burden — the guilt and burden of striking down past enemies that you know you had no choice on. The burden of being a hero knowing there are certain decisions you can't reverse, even if it does eat you alive from the inside.
Also following this train of thought, I really love how Myste by default is designed. Myste sharing Ysayle's hairstyle and Haurchefant's hair color is a deliberate choice, I think, considering your WoL feels their loss very keenly in canon (if your story line has one or both of them alive, I love you so much for that). This grief is incredibly palpable just by their design alone, and it's an element that I don't think is talked about very much.
How this relates to my characters
I love reading how other people interpret their Warrior of Light's experiences going through this quest line in particular, with many of them changing some parts here and there, which past enemies appear during the level 70 solo duty, what Myste means or looks to them etc. For Cassius in particular, I don't really have much to work for her as her true story begins in Shadowbringers — but I like to think in a scenario where she's the WoL, she would have gone through these with a lot of sympathy and shared grief; she isn't the sort of person who could say no to a child in distress, for one, and in alternate storylines where she is the WoL, she does know what it feels like to lose the ones she loved, and how strongly she wanted to see them even for a moment. In more ways than one, she carries a lot of these pains with her, and I want to think that it's the driving force behind her decisions to continue assisting Myste in their endeavors, even if she starts to realize there's more to the child than they let on.
But Cassius at the end is a person that chooses peace; at the end of the day, she has already learned to let go and live for those who can no longer live alongside her. She knows she's loved, and that love lives with her forever.
Conclusion
At the end of the day we all have something that weighs heavily in our hearts. Whether that's a grief that's either still fresh or still lives with us long after the person or life we knew is gone, regrets that we still replay in our minds, our worries and woes.
I believe it's so important to remember that life endures, even with this pain. It's proof that we once loved and were once loved. Acknowledging and living peacefully with it is how we grow as a person, and gives us space to fill with love again.
Grief, after all, is love that has nowhere else to go.
So why not take that love and pour it into something new? A new experience, a new person... maybe even yourself?