Archive: Rydia fic from mount_ordeals
Title: The First Real Lesson
Theme + Number: (01) beginnings
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairings included: Rydia, Mother
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Summary:
She can still remember the feel of that very first spell. It had ripped through her fingertips - it was always her hands that summoned her magic, even as an adult - and she’d cried a little, because she’d been surprised. The thin sheet of ice coating the grass in front of her had made her feel a little better, but she’d been a little discouraged, and asked about it.
Magic hurts, Rydia, her mother had said, instead of being blindly reassuring, and that was the change: this was her first real lesson. Every time we cast a spell, we use a little piece of ourselves. And her child self had been intimidated.
She’d practiced more, but it wasn’t until after - Cecil - that she could cast anything reliably. At that point her heart hurt so badly she didn’t even notice the twinge through her palms as the magic made itself manifest: at least the pain of casting was only physical.
Looking back, Rydia is surprised at her younger self: at the ease with which the fear of pain became irrelevant, which was the moment she began to be a real mage.
Title: Meteo
Theme + Number: (02) endings
Claim: Rydia (character, challenge)
Rating: K
Warnings: none
Summary: [Companion to (01), Beginnings.]
Meteo is everything she’d never wanted: it’s fire, lots of fire, flames of the most horribly uncontrollable kind, the fire that marked the end of her mother and her childhood. And it’s the spell that finished Tellah, who had been like a loving and kindly (if rather kooky-looking) grandfather to her at a time when she couldn’t exactly call Cecil a friend. Rydia hates thinking about the people they’ve lost along the way because it always comes back to her mother and that’s the worst thing ever. Meteo makes her think of it all and she hates the spell because of it.
She still casts it: they’re on the moon, and this is the end of everything, probably her end as well; even she can only cast it perhaps five times before her strength wanes and she must either sleep or take an ether pill. She casts it as she has to, because she has to. Because this is all there is.
But Rydia knows: Meteo marks the end of her black magic. Even if she survives, and makes it home … she is done. She will learn no more.
Title: Grown Up
Theme + Number: (03) In the Middle
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Character/Pairing: v. slight R/E
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Summary:
She knows that sometimes they still see her as a child. She sees it in Cecil’s eyes sometimes when he looks at her: he’s seeing her again as six years old and full of helpless magical sound and fury and sadness. Rosa is even worse, because she looks at Rydia with kindness and pity and her white-magic desire to fix whatever went wrong. Kain, when she can catch his eye, looks at her as if he wonders whether she really is the same person, green hair notwithstanding. But Rydia-the-child reflects in all their gazes from time to time.
And yet there’s Edge; he looks at her only as an adult, as something more than she feels that she is. Edge’s eyes look at her as an equal. He glances at her in admiration. Rydia doesn’t feel grown-up enough to even know how to deal with Edge’s eyes. But they are there, all the same.
Rydia feels poignantly stuck between child and adult: she may have aged in the Land of Summons, but she’s grown up more in her past few weeks on the Surface than she knew she needed to.
Title: Rebuilding
Theme + Number: (04) Town
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Character/Pairing: again, v. slight R/E.
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Summary:
Rydia is in the Town of Baron again, looking around her in what is mostly wonderment but is also partially jealousy. Mist was barely even a village, even in her earliest childhood memories; now it bears the scars of fire, and most of the remaining Callers have moved away, into Kaipo. She’s collecting supplies for her next trip up north because all she wants is for her home to be a home again: it’s distressing, in her eyes, that the most sophisticated place she has ever lived was populated by monsters and ruled by a dragon. (It also makes it difficult for her to carry on conversations at Rosa’s dinner parties.)
The town is bustling and successful, and the people are happy and Rydia wonders just when the Villagers of Mist gave up and vanished. She thinks of Eblan, and Damcyan, and even Fabul: wounded, but still standing. Regrowing. Rebuilding. Baby towns which will become cities again.
“It’s okay,” Edge says from her side as he collects his own Baronian care package to take back to the caves that now make up his kingdom. “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
Title: Country
Theme + Number: (05) Country
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Rating: K
Summary:
It’s a little strange to her, as she looks around the table, because she is surrounded by friends who are kings and queens. (Rydia is at another Baronian banquet, sitting beside Edward in a dress that doesn’t suit her, bare feet fidgeting with the discarded slippers she borrowed from Rosa.) Edward had Damcyan and Edge had Eblan from the beginning, but the other countries of the world have turned to the warriors who faced Zeromus. Cecil and Rosa have Baron, and they were born to be royal; as was Yang, who now carries Fabul. Even Kain (Baron’s new Chancellor, should he return) and Cid: both were from castle life.
Rydia was born a commoner, and she is not sure whether she feels jealous or just left out. Mist is no country: the Callers are a forgotten people. And she cannot return to the Land of Summons now, not unless or until Asura and Leviathan find a way to control the flow of time.
Rydia does not want to rule - she does not know the rules to be a queen, as Rosa seems to, instinctively - but sometimes she finds herself simply wishing for a country of her own.
Title: Green
Theme + Number: (06) Forest
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairings included: Edward (gen)
Rating: K
Warnings: none
Summary:
Edward has taken her to Toroia with him and Rydia finds herself overwhelmed. Everything is green and alive and so vibrant, and she - with her green hair and green dress - wants to be part of this happy landscape. Mist was all cave and rock and patches of hardy grass, and the Land of Summons was stone and metal: this is real, this is life, and Rydia wants to somehow swallow it whole and keep it inside herself.
They’re walking through the forest, slowly, and the sun is throwing leaf-dappled shadows across their faces. She and Edward are trying to catch up - he’s still half in awe of her new, grown-up self. She’s told him haltingly about Leviathan, and the Land of Summons. He is trying to tell her of Toroia, and the Dark Elf; but Edward is a bard, and so the tale is growing long and beautiful, and much more detailed as he rambles.
She’s idly picking flowers and sticking them in her hair, and somehow the look puts Edward more at ease: she’s less of a wild stranger and more of the child he knew, finally recognizeable as the younger-sister he'd given up for lost.
Title: Rebuilding Eblan
Theme + Number: (07) Castle
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Rating: K
Warnings: none
Summary:
She’s eyeing the castle with blatant apprehension and Edge can’t help but laugh.
“Okay, so it’s a little beat up.”
Rydia gives him a look that’s half-glare and half-pitying. “You want us to rebuild ... that?” She’s only seen Baron, really: the only castle that emerged from the War unscathed. She can’t decide whether she thinks Edge is fantastically daring and determined, or just daft. Possibly a bit of both.
“I told you it needed work, my darling,” he says with a grin that weighs heavily on the side of daft. “You’re not afraid of a little dirt?”
Her eyes narrow playfully. “Are you trying to bully me?”
From behind them, Cid spits out a predictable (and predictably loud) guffaw. “Watch it, ninja boy. I don’t think Eblan can take any more damage.”
Cecil’s gentle laugh floats out; Rydia will never stop being surprised at the fact that Cecil can actually laugh, and does, often, now that he is wed to Rosa and the war is over. “I’d rather avoid a Meteo if at all possible,” he offers.
Edge laughs and throws his hands up: “Fine, fine!”; just as Rydia whirls on Cecil, grinning and insistently stating, “My temper is not that bad.”
Title: Giant
Theme + Number: (08) War
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Summary:
It’s become a war now, she realizes, as she stares down over the edge of the airship at other airships and tanks and the fire of the Mysidian mages. Originally - well, she didn’t know what was going on when she was too young for it; but Rydia learned right and wrong in the Land of Summons and she knows right is Asura, and Cecil, and Mount Ordeals. Wrong was always just a man in a dark cloak, some strange fleeting feeling of evil: someone who’d taken Rosa, who wanted to hurt Cecil, who was crazy and chasing myths and crystals. My friend’s enemies are my enemies: and as such, she’d entered the fray.
But now it’s war. There’s a giant standing there, some half-organic, half-metallic monstrosity out of one of her childhood nightmares, and it’s going to destroy the world. There are tanks and armies and her friends are out there, risking their own worlds.
Rydia has had her world destroyed before, and she knows what it feels like.
And when someone asks if they can jump, Rydia feels her magic prick at her fingertips in preparation.
Title: Fight
Theme + Number: (09) Peace
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters: Cecil
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Summary:
“What are we fighting for, Cecil?”
Rydia’s voice is soft and light in the strange not-darkness of the moon. In this strange crystalline cavern she can’t help but be introspective and Cecil has always been her pillar of light; she hopes this means he has the answers.
“Everyone fights for something different, Rydia,” he says, which is not the answer she is looking for: she’s tired of being treated like a child. The thought writes itself across her face, as they always do (Rydia has never learned how to lie), and Cecil gives a brief dark chuckle.
“I just … want an end,” he says. “I’m fighting to … to protect, I guess. To protect Baron. Rosa. All of you. To protect the whole world.” He stops, looking down at his hands, bare of their gauntlets but still powerful: paladin’s hands. “I was given … whatever this power is. I’m part of this, and it’s my responsibility to…”
The fire is smooth on his face and Rydia realizes he is saying more than words.
“I think I’m fighting for - for peace,” he finishes, and she knows suddenly that this is Cecil at his most raw. “I just want to bring peace.”
“Can you fight for peace?” she asks, feeling like this is another piece of monster-logic she will never understand.
“I hope so,” Cecil says, and gives her a smile.
Title: Mother
Theme + Number: (10) Family
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters: Rosa
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Summary:
In the end it’s Rosa who goes with her, which is both strangely fitting and makes Rydia even more nervous: Rosa is the Queen of Baron and Cecil’s consort, but she is also kind and beautiful and will say all the right things while Rydia stands in the back and looks out of place. They make the trip mostly in silence - the monsters of the cave do not seem inclined to tangle with her whip and Rosa’s bow, though she can vaguely sense them watching. Rosa seems to understand how hard this is and keeps the silence like a vigil, commenting only now and again in that soft Rosa voice that makes her so like an angel.
They reach Mist at dawn and, as she expected, it is Rosa who offers her - and Baron’s - condolences and sympathies and money and protection. Rosa delivers it like the simple queen she is: straightforward and kind, thoroughly trustworthy, inherently holy. The people of Mist are wary, but you cannot help but instantly adore Rosa: she is a queen of everything.
Rydia does not see it, for the instant they enter the town she spots the memorial, and flees; and once the impromptu ceremony has ended Rosa comes and finds her, sobbing over her mother’s fresh gravestone, nested carefully against her father’s aging marker.
It’s even more fitting and more strange for Rosa to hold her as she cries over the end of her family: Rosa was her mother once, too, and perhaps still is in some strange way, for all that the girls are the same age.
Title: First Kiss
Theme + Number: (11) Romance
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairing: R/E
Rating: T
Warnings: Longer than usual. Rambly. Otherwise, nothing.
Summary:
Rydia finds herself a little surprised when Edge kisses her at Cecil’s wedding: surprised, and confused, and a little taken aback. The kiss itself is normal enough; she knows how those work. When it’s over - which is quickly - he gives her a sly grin she doesn’t understand and asks if it’s her first kiss. She says no, of course, mystified. She’s kissed her mother many times, and she’s kissed Asura, and Leviathan, and she’s kissed Cecil, and even Rosa, and - here Edge stops her, and asks if it was her first real kiss. There’s something strange in his eyes like confusion, or surprise, but he’s trying to hide it behind a smirk.
She asks him what makes kisses real, then, and he says his kisses are different than the others; so she asks what makes them so different and he says kisses between a man and a woman are special; so she asks why, thinking of the greeting kisses she’d given Cecil, and Edward, and even Cid - and here Edge throws his hands up in the air and walks away and Rydia is left surprised, and confused, and a little taken aback.
Later Rosa laughs at her gently and says Edge was mostly trying to flirt with her; but Rydia finds herself even more confused by that concept, mostly because Edge is just inherently confusing. Rosa says it’s probably about how much Edge likes her, because that’s usually what those things mean. This makes sense: her mother’s kisses were full of affection, as were Asura’s; and her own kisses to Cecil and Rosa were for good luck.
Rosa asks if it’s love. Rydia understands love: her heart is full of it, fierce and vibrant, a protective and burning sort of love. She loves all of her friends with this fierce passion; she knows she wouldn’t have made it to the moon and back without it. Of course she loves Edge, she replies; she fought side by side with him, she would have died to protect him.
But Rosa shakes her head, delicately, and says that Rydia is thinking of the wrong kind of love - the example in Rydia’s life has always been the strong, defensive, protective kind, the straightforward love of monsters who play no games and speak no other languages. Rosa says, this is romantic love. It’s different. And her voice gets all soft and white and thick and it’s obvious that she’s not thinking of Rydia and Edge any more.
Rydia can’t help but make a face which makes Rosa laugh out loud as she leaves; but she is still thinking about it a few days later when she sees Edge again. She walks up to him boldly - he is trying to apologize, she thinks, but she pulls him down and kisses him anyway.
She can’t help that her love is straightforward and simple and fierce, but it’s worth trying to understand this other kind. She can’t imagine her own voice going all thick and creamy for anyone; but maybe Edge’s kisses do feel a little bit different, when she thinks about it.
Title: Unity
Theme + Number: (12) Union
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairing: n/a
Rating: K
Summary:
Cecil has summoned everyone together once again, but this time politically; he’s hoping to create some kind of union, some conglomerate of nations and towns which can meet together and work together and rebuild and protect. His language is so very Cecil that Rydia finds herself believing he can do it by the sheer force of his will: Cecil is a true Paladin, one from the heart, and what he does best is inspire.
Rydia’s not really sure what she’s doing here, but she appreciates the invitation nonetheless. It’s been hard for her to find a place in this new world, and mostly she’s been traveling: to Edge, to Edward, to Mysidia, back to Cecil and Rosa, moving in a broad circle like a tether around the Underground home she cannot return to. Everyone has offered to make their own homes hers (Edge very blatantly and more than once) but Rydia still carries a small ounce of hope that something will happen and she will be able to go home again, without having to worry.
She appreciates Cecil’s talk of unity because it is the flame that she carries in her own heart: the idea of a world that is only in one piece, no longer broken; a land with only one timeline.
Title: Cheer
Theme + Number: (13) Happiness
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairing: ~platonic R/E
Rating: K+
Summary:
“You tired, Ryds?” Edge asked. He’d put an arm around her beside the fire, but instead of giving him a tongue-lashing and an elbow to the gut, she’d simply sighed and almost leaned a little closer against him. They were all tired, but she usually had more - more energy, more color, more spunk and spitfire and cheer. She was fading; they all were.
Rydia tried to keep her smile on, day after day: even as the battles grew tougher and they all reached and passed the point of exhaustion, even as her magic honed itself to a sharp point with use and she drained her self, time after time, with meteors and summons. The metallic pull of the moon dragged them all down and down. It was hard: they were all grey with exhaustion, and weary, and probably fatalistic.
She tried to bring a little bit of happiness; that was all she could do (and when she couldn’t do it, she growled thunder and threw fire more fiercely than before). But who else would? Cecil was noble and worried, as was Rosa; and though both were calm and serene in the face of battle and darkness and death, neither was full of laughter. And Kain was a dark face on the other side of the fire, speaking only to Cecil and even then in small sentence fragments. Even Edge - the ninja was full of arrogance and bluster and anger, a sarcastic and desperate energy that they needed. But no-one smiled anymore.
Rydia remembered happiness, vaguely, from the childhood that felt mostly like a dream and her strange adolescence in her monster home. But somehow she knew it was important: and so she flirted with Edge, and helped him play pranks on Cecil, and scolded him when he did them alone (but mostly because he did them without her). She talked with Rosa about magic, and about her childhood. And sometimes, when she was feeling her most low and desolate, she’d cross the fire and talk with Kain, which somehow always made her feel more desolate, but she kind of felt better for trying. It was all she could do: somebody had to smile, and be cheerful, because they needed some kind of hope.
“A little,” she said to Edge now, getting her bearings back enough to grimace and move slightly away. But she smiled as she did it, and poked his arm, so he would smile back. “Aren’t we all?”
Title: Joys
Theme + Number: (14) Close
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Rating: K
Warnings: n/a
Summary:
“We’re so close,” she says, laughing as she runs up the hill, throwing the words over her shoulder as her streaming green hair catches against her lips. This high atop Mount Ordeals the wind is fierce and she’s not sure whether or not Edge can hear her.
They’ve come mostly to retrieve Kain, but Rydia was raised on the legend of Mysidia and its holy summit and she has wanted to see it ever since she learned it truly existed. She knows she should be more reverent as she climbs the hill, but she cannot help but be filled with joy: it is all around her. The simple joy of Edge chasing her up the mountain, playing games and laughing. The secret joy of their message to Kain: of Rosa’s child, his namesake, and Baron’s heir. The sacred joy of Mount Ordeals itself and the sun on her face and the realization of a legend.
She feels honored to be so close to something she’d almost worshiped as a child, but it makes her smile in broad waves as the sun comes out: the mountain is full of peace, and she laughs as she steps forward to embrace Kain, for she’s never been this close to happiness.
Theme + Number: (01) beginnings
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairings included: Rydia, Mother
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Summary:
She can still remember the feel of that very first spell. It had ripped through her fingertips - it was always her hands that summoned her magic, even as an adult - and she’d cried a little, because she’d been surprised. The thin sheet of ice coating the grass in front of her had made her feel a little better, but she’d been a little discouraged, and asked about it.
Magic hurts, Rydia, her mother had said, instead of being blindly reassuring, and that was the change: this was her first real lesson. Every time we cast a spell, we use a little piece of ourselves. And her child self had been intimidated.
She’d practiced more, but it wasn’t until after - Cecil - that she could cast anything reliably. At that point her heart hurt so badly she didn’t even notice the twinge through her palms as the magic made itself manifest: at least the pain of casting was only physical.
Looking back, Rydia is surprised at her younger self: at the ease with which the fear of pain became irrelevant, which was the moment she began to be a real mage.
Title: Meteo
Theme + Number: (02) endings
Claim: Rydia (character, challenge)
Rating: K
Warnings: none
Summary: [Companion to (01), Beginnings.]
Meteo is everything she’d never wanted: it’s fire, lots of fire, flames of the most horribly uncontrollable kind, the fire that marked the end of her mother and her childhood. And it’s the spell that finished Tellah, who had been like a loving and kindly (if rather kooky-looking) grandfather to her at a time when she couldn’t exactly call Cecil a friend. Rydia hates thinking about the people they’ve lost along the way because it always comes back to her mother and that’s the worst thing ever. Meteo makes her think of it all and she hates the spell because of it.
She still casts it: they’re on the moon, and this is the end of everything, probably her end as well; even she can only cast it perhaps five times before her strength wanes and she must either sleep or take an ether pill. She casts it as she has to, because she has to. Because this is all there is.
But Rydia knows: Meteo marks the end of her black magic. Even if she survives, and makes it home … she is done. She will learn no more.
Title: Grown Up
Theme + Number: (03) In the Middle
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Character/Pairing: v. slight R/E
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Summary:
She knows that sometimes they still see her as a child. She sees it in Cecil’s eyes sometimes when he looks at her: he’s seeing her again as six years old and full of helpless magical sound and fury and sadness. Rosa is even worse, because she looks at Rydia with kindness and pity and her white-magic desire to fix whatever went wrong. Kain, when she can catch his eye, looks at her as if he wonders whether she really is the same person, green hair notwithstanding. But Rydia-the-child reflects in all their gazes from time to time.
And yet there’s Edge; he looks at her only as an adult, as something more than she feels that she is. Edge’s eyes look at her as an equal. He glances at her in admiration. Rydia doesn’t feel grown-up enough to even know how to deal with Edge’s eyes. But they are there, all the same.
Rydia feels poignantly stuck between child and adult: she may have aged in the Land of Summons, but she’s grown up more in her past few weeks on the Surface than she knew she needed to.
Title: Rebuilding
Theme + Number: (04) Town
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Character/Pairing: again, v. slight R/E.
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Summary:
Rydia is in the Town of Baron again, looking around her in what is mostly wonderment but is also partially jealousy. Mist was barely even a village, even in her earliest childhood memories; now it bears the scars of fire, and most of the remaining Callers have moved away, into Kaipo. She’s collecting supplies for her next trip up north because all she wants is for her home to be a home again: it’s distressing, in her eyes, that the most sophisticated place she has ever lived was populated by monsters and ruled by a dragon. (It also makes it difficult for her to carry on conversations at Rosa’s dinner parties.)
The town is bustling and successful, and the people are happy and Rydia wonders just when the Villagers of Mist gave up and vanished. She thinks of Eblan, and Damcyan, and even Fabul: wounded, but still standing. Regrowing. Rebuilding. Baby towns which will become cities again.
“It’s okay,” Edge says from her side as he collects his own Baronian care package to take back to the caves that now make up his kingdom. “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
Title: Country
Theme + Number: (05) Country
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Rating: K
Summary:
It’s a little strange to her, as she looks around the table, because she is surrounded by friends who are kings and queens. (Rydia is at another Baronian banquet, sitting beside Edward in a dress that doesn’t suit her, bare feet fidgeting with the discarded slippers she borrowed from Rosa.) Edward had Damcyan and Edge had Eblan from the beginning, but the other countries of the world have turned to the warriors who faced Zeromus. Cecil and Rosa have Baron, and they were born to be royal; as was Yang, who now carries Fabul. Even Kain (Baron’s new Chancellor, should he return) and Cid: both were from castle life.
Rydia was born a commoner, and she is not sure whether she feels jealous or just left out. Mist is no country: the Callers are a forgotten people. And she cannot return to the Land of Summons now, not unless or until Asura and Leviathan find a way to control the flow of time.
Rydia does not want to rule - she does not know the rules to be a queen, as Rosa seems to, instinctively - but sometimes she finds herself simply wishing for a country of her own.
Title: Green
Theme + Number: (06) Forest
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairings included: Edward (gen)
Rating: K
Warnings: none
Summary:
Edward has taken her to Toroia with him and Rydia finds herself overwhelmed. Everything is green and alive and so vibrant, and she - with her green hair and green dress - wants to be part of this happy landscape. Mist was all cave and rock and patches of hardy grass, and the Land of Summons was stone and metal: this is real, this is life, and Rydia wants to somehow swallow it whole and keep it inside herself.
They’re walking through the forest, slowly, and the sun is throwing leaf-dappled shadows across their faces. She and Edward are trying to catch up - he’s still half in awe of her new, grown-up self. She’s told him haltingly about Leviathan, and the Land of Summons. He is trying to tell her of Toroia, and the Dark Elf; but Edward is a bard, and so the tale is growing long and beautiful, and much more detailed as he rambles.
She’s idly picking flowers and sticking them in her hair, and somehow the look puts Edward more at ease: she’s less of a wild stranger and more of the child he knew, finally recognizeable as the younger-sister he'd given up for lost.
Title: Rebuilding Eblan
Theme + Number: (07) Castle
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Rating: K
Warnings: none
Summary:
She’s eyeing the castle with blatant apprehension and Edge can’t help but laugh.
“Okay, so it’s a little beat up.”
Rydia gives him a look that’s half-glare and half-pitying. “You want us to rebuild ... that?” She’s only seen Baron, really: the only castle that emerged from the War unscathed. She can’t decide whether she thinks Edge is fantastically daring and determined, or just daft. Possibly a bit of both.
“I told you it needed work, my darling,” he says with a grin that weighs heavily on the side of daft. “You’re not afraid of a little dirt?”
Her eyes narrow playfully. “Are you trying to bully me?”
From behind them, Cid spits out a predictable (and predictably loud) guffaw. “Watch it, ninja boy. I don’t think Eblan can take any more damage.”
Cecil’s gentle laugh floats out; Rydia will never stop being surprised at the fact that Cecil can actually laugh, and does, often, now that he is wed to Rosa and the war is over. “I’d rather avoid a Meteo if at all possible,” he offers.
Edge laughs and throws his hands up: “Fine, fine!”; just as Rydia whirls on Cecil, grinning and insistently stating, “My temper is not that bad.”
Title: Giant
Theme + Number: (08) War
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Summary:
It’s become a war now, she realizes, as she stares down over the edge of the airship at other airships and tanks and the fire of the Mysidian mages. Originally - well, she didn’t know what was going on when she was too young for it; but Rydia learned right and wrong in the Land of Summons and she knows right is Asura, and Cecil, and Mount Ordeals. Wrong was always just a man in a dark cloak, some strange fleeting feeling of evil: someone who’d taken Rosa, who wanted to hurt Cecil, who was crazy and chasing myths and crystals. My friend’s enemies are my enemies: and as such, she’d entered the fray.
But now it’s war. There’s a giant standing there, some half-organic, half-metallic monstrosity out of one of her childhood nightmares, and it’s going to destroy the world. There are tanks and armies and her friends are out there, risking their own worlds.
Rydia has had her world destroyed before, and she knows what it feels like.
And when someone asks if they can jump, Rydia feels her magic prick at her fingertips in preparation.
Title: Fight
Theme + Number: (09) Peace
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters: Cecil
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Summary:
“What are we fighting for, Cecil?”
Rydia’s voice is soft and light in the strange not-darkness of the moon. In this strange crystalline cavern she can’t help but be introspective and Cecil has always been her pillar of light; she hopes this means he has the answers.
“Everyone fights for something different, Rydia,” he says, which is not the answer she is looking for: she’s tired of being treated like a child. The thought writes itself across her face, as they always do (Rydia has never learned how to lie), and Cecil gives a brief dark chuckle.
“I just … want an end,” he says. “I’m fighting to … to protect, I guess. To protect Baron. Rosa. All of you. To protect the whole world.” He stops, looking down at his hands, bare of their gauntlets but still powerful: paladin’s hands. “I was given … whatever this power is. I’m part of this, and it’s my responsibility to…”
The fire is smooth on his face and Rydia realizes he is saying more than words.
“I think I’m fighting for - for peace,” he finishes, and she knows suddenly that this is Cecil at his most raw. “I just want to bring peace.”
“Can you fight for peace?” she asks, feeling like this is another piece of monster-logic she will never understand.
“I hope so,” Cecil says, and gives her a smile.
Title: Mother
Theme + Number: (10) Family
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters: Rosa
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Summary:
In the end it’s Rosa who goes with her, which is both strangely fitting and makes Rydia even more nervous: Rosa is the Queen of Baron and Cecil’s consort, but she is also kind and beautiful and will say all the right things while Rydia stands in the back and looks out of place. They make the trip mostly in silence - the monsters of the cave do not seem inclined to tangle with her whip and Rosa’s bow, though she can vaguely sense them watching. Rosa seems to understand how hard this is and keeps the silence like a vigil, commenting only now and again in that soft Rosa voice that makes her so like an angel.
They reach Mist at dawn and, as she expected, it is Rosa who offers her - and Baron’s - condolences and sympathies and money and protection. Rosa delivers it like the simple queen she is: straightforward and kind, thoroughly trustworthy, inherently holy. The people of Mist are wary, but you cannot help but instantly adore Rosa: she is a queen of everything.
Rydia does not see it, for the instant they enter the town she spots the memorial, and flees; and once the impromptu ceremony has ended Rosa comes and finds her, sobbing over her mother’s fresh gravestone, nested carefully against her father’s aging marker.
It’s even more fitting and more strange for Rosa to hold her as she cries over the end of her family: Rosa was her mother once, too, and perhaps still is in some strange way, for all that the girls are the same age.
Title: First Kiss
Theme + Number: (11) Romance
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairing: R/E
Rating: T
Warnings: Longer than usual. Rambly. Otherwise, nothing.
Summary:
Rydia finds herself a little surprised when Edge kisses her at Cecil’s wedding: surprised, and confused, and a little taken aback. The kiss itself is normal enough; she knows how those work. When it’s over - which is quickly - he gives her a sly grin she doesn’t understand and asks if it’s her first kiss. She says no, of course, mystified. She’s kissed her mother many times, and she’s kissed Asura, and Leviathan, and she’s kissed Cecil, and even Rosa, and - here Edge stops her, and asks if it was her first real kiss. There’s something strange in his eyes like confusion, or surprise, but he’s trying to hide it behind a smirk.
She asks him what makes kisses real, then, and he says his kisses are different than the others; so she asks what makes them so different and he says kisses between a man and a woman are special; so she asks why, thinking of the greeting kisses she’d given Cecil, and Edward, and even Cid - and here Edge throws his hands up in the air and walks away and Rydia is left surprised, and confused, and a little taken aback.
Later Rosa laughs at her gently and says Edge was mostly trying to flirt with her; but Rydia finds herself even more confused by that concept, mostly because Edge is just inherently confusing. Rosa says it’s probably about how much Edge likes her, because that’s usually what those things mean. This makes sense: her mother’s kisses were full of affection, as were Asura’s; and her own kisses to Cecil and Rosa were for good luck.
Rosa asks if it’s love. Rydia understands love: her heart is full of it, fierce and vibrant, a protective and burning sort of love. She loves all of her friends with this fierce passion; she knows she wouldn’t have made it to the moon and back without it. Of course she loves Edge, she replies; she fought side by side with him, she would have died to protect him.
But Rosa shakes her head, delicately, and says that Rydia is thinking of the wrong kind of love - the example in Rydia’s life has always been the strong, defensive, protective kind, the straightforward love of monsters who play no games and speak no other languages. Rosa says, this is romantic love. It’s different. And her voice gets all soft and white and thick and it’s obvious that she’s not thinking of Rydia and Edge any more.
Rydia can’t help but make a face which makes Rosa laugh out loud as she leaves; but she is still thinking about it a few days later when she sees Edge again. She walks up to him boldly - he is trying to apologize, she thinks, but she pulls him down and kisses him anyway.
She can’t help that her love is straightforward and simple and fierce, but it’s worth trying to understand this other kind. She can’t imagine her own voice going all thick and creamy for anyone; but maybe Edge’s kisses do feel a little bit different, when she thinks about it.
Title: Unity
Theme + Number: (12) Union
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairing: n/a
Rating: K
Summary:
Cecil has summoned everyone together once again, but this time politically; he’s hoping to create some kind of union, some conglomerate of nations and towns which can meet together and work together and rebuild and protect. His language is so very Cecil that Rydia finds herself believing he can do it by the sheer force of his will: Cecil is a true Paladin, one from the heart, and what he does best is inspire.
Rydia’s not really sure what she’s doing here, but she appreciates the invitation nonetheless. It’s been hard for her to find a place in this new world, and mostly she’s been traveling: to Edge, to Edward, to Mysidia, back to Cecil and Rosa, moving in a broad circle like a tether around the Underground home she cannot return to. Everyone has offered to make their own homes hers (Edge very blatantly and more than once) but Rydia still carries a small ounce of hope that something will happen and she will be able to go home again, without having to worry.
She appreciates Cecil’s talk of unity because it is the flame that she carries in her own heart: the idea of a world that is only in one piece, no longer broken; a land with only one timeline.
Title: Cheer
Theme + Number: (13) Happiness
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Characters/Pairing: ~platonic R/E
Rating: K+
Summary:
“You tired, Ryds?” Edge asked. He’d put an arm around her beside the fire, but instead of giving him a tongue-lashing and an elbow to the gut, she’d simply sighed and almost leaned a little closer against him. They were all tired, but she usually had more - more energy, more color, more spunk and spitfire and cheer. She was fading; they all were.
Rydia tried to keep her smile on, day after day: even as the battles grew tougher and they all reached and passed the point of exhaustion, even as her magic honed itself to a sharp point with use and she drained her self, time after time, with meteors and summons. The metallic pull of the moon dragged them all down and down. It was hard: they were all grey with exhaustion, and weary, and probably fatalistic.
She tried to bring a little bit of happiness; that was all she could do (and when she couldn’t do it, she growled thunder and threw fire more fiercely than before). But who else would? Cecil was noble and worried, as was Rosa; and though both were calm and serene in the face of battle and darkness and death, neither was full of laughter. And Kain was a dark face on the other side of the fire, speaking only to Cecil and even then in small sentence fragments. Even Edge - the ninja was full of arrogance and bluster and anger, a sarcastic and desperate energy that they needed. But no-one smiled anymore.
Rydia remembered happiness, vaguely, from the childhood that felt mostly like a dream and her strange adolescence in her monster home. But somehow she knew it was important: and so she flirted with Edge, and helped him play pranks on Cecil, and scolded him when he did them alone (but mostly because he did them without her). She talked with Rosa about magic, and about her childhood. And sometimes, when she was feeling her most low and desolate, she’d cross the fire and talk with Kain, which somehow always made her feel more desolate, but she kind of felt better for trying. It was all she could do: somebody had to smile, and be cheerful, because they needed some kind of hope.
“A little,” she said to Edge now, getting her bearings back enough to grimace and move slightly away. But she smiled as she did it, and poked his arm, so he would smile back. “Aren’t we all?”
Title: Joys
Theme + Number: (14) Close
Claim: Rydia (character; challenge)
Rating: K
Warnings: n/a
Summary:
“We’re so close,” she says, laughing as she runs up the hill, throwing the words over her shoulder as her streaming green hair catches against her lips. This high atop Mount Ordeals the wind is fierce and she’s not sure whether or not Edge can hear her.
They’ve come mostly to retrieve Kain, but Rydia was raised on the legend of Mysidia and its holy summit and she has wanted to see it ever since she learned it truly existed. She knows she should be more reverent as she climbs the hill, but she cannot help but be filled with joy: it is all around her. The simple joy of Edge chasing her up the mountain, playing games and laughing. The secret joy of their message to Kain: of Rosa’s child, his namesake, and Baron’s heir. The sacred joy of Mount Ordeals itself and the sun on her face and the realization of a legend.
She feels honored to be so close to something she’d almost worshiped as a child, but it makes her smile in broad waves as the sun comes out: the mountain is full of peace, and she laughs as she steps forward to embrace Kain, for she’s never been this close to happiness.