FFVIII, "Breaking Ice", for alimond.
Title: Breaking Ice
For: alimond
Medium: Fic.
Request(s): "FFVIII: Rinoa/Edea/Ultimecia, not necessarily sexual."
Fandom(s): Final Fantasy VIII.
Character/pairings: Rinoa/Edea, mild Edea/Ultimecia.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, character death.
Summary: Ice echoes in her; her future, her past.
Notes: The Ulti part of it came out a little more vague than I had intended, unfortunately. Hope you like it!
The Hynian priest spits at her feet, calling her an abomination.
Things weren't supposed to turn out this way. They were supposed to be happy, she thinks, kneeling at his side; they way he might have done for her had they been given a real chance. His body is cold, and she can no longer hear his heartbeat. She used to be able to hear it from miles away; his life's tempo once laid itself out in front of her like music notes.
(Except she's an abomination.)
Rinoa wears white, while everyone else wears black. It had been on an utter whim. When Centra had been a nation, its colour of mourning had been white. She doesn't know what makes her think of it - she doesn't even like white. No hidden possibilities, no mystery. Maybe it's because he would have frowned at it, called her silly, tried to get her to change into something more appropriate. Maybe it's because she knows it's the closest thing to a wedding dress she'll ever get to wear now.
(Except she's an abomination.)
She leans on Edea, their fingers tightly intertwined. The woman is a safe harbour in the wake of her despair. When she's with Edea, there are no nightmares, not even the waking ones.
(Except...)
Rinoa stares up at the priest, her lips wooden. He's offering his blessings to the body, offering it - him - penance in its - his - journey to the next life. It would be very easy, Rinoa notes, for a strong gust of wind to send the priest tumbling into the rocks below. Perhaps a bloodclot dislodged and shot to his heart. A tumble on the steps of his church when no one's around, he cracks his head open and bleeds to death. She thinks all these things, begrudging him for the beating of his own heart when Squall lies cold. She's an abomination, she thinks, turning the word over again and again in her mind, feeling it weigh unspoken on her tongue.
Edea squeezes her hand. Rinoa can feel the life in it, and does nothing.
---
She dreams of Timber, of the dry forests burning to the ground as the Phoenix spreads it wings above them; a splash of fire against the grey sky.
She dreams of Ultimecia. The woman behind the power stops existing, little questions unanswered - what's your real name? did you have a lover? - as she becomes the Sorceress. Everything is there; all of history in the sweep of her hair, in the light behind her eyes.
She dreams of being consumed by the being that calls itself Sorceress, and wakes up smiling. Those are the worst times of all.
---
"We find each other," Edea says, stroking Rinoa's hair. "Power always follows power."
Power always follows power. Rinoa presses her lips to Edea's knuckles, and tastes only ice.
---
Cid is attentive and kind, even as his children become bloodstains on the battlefield. He grips his wife's hand, smiles, offers her pretty words like penance. Edea is hollow, the years carved as lines underneath her eyes even as she retains her youthful appearance, thrust upward slowly into the years she was previously impervious to.
She's nothing. She's nobody's mother. She could have consumed the world in flames, crushed it beneath her finger tips. It's gone now, torn from her as she spread some lie about wanting peace and sowed the seeds to defeat the undefeatable - as if it could have made a difference, she remembers thinking, grim words and grimmer laughter. It had made a difference; her little toy soldiers all in a row, stripped of their memories so they could stand and fight. They had done their job too well, and it - everything - had slipped between her fingers. Power belongs to the powerful, and she's just a weak woman with a weaker heart.
The girl, the Current, will realise this and leave. It's just a matter of when.
---
Rinoa tosses her bag into the trunk. Odine's bangle is tight, almost choking, around her wrist.
"Where're you headed, love?" the man asks. He looks kind, with sandy hair and a crooked smile. She closes her eyes and sees another man's name written on his lips, a chilly reminder of what she once had and since lost.
"Wherever," she says, and then adds, "Tromedia." It's where he's going.
She tastes the name in her mind. Tromedia. Snow and the moon, and no one knowing who - what - she is. It's not home. Home is six feet down, home is cold hands and hollow eyes. It's something else, pretty street lamps and cobbled roads. It's enough, she thinks, almost believing her own lie.
---
A hot bath, once a week. A second indulgence would damage her skin, Rinoa tells herself. She imagines cold hands pressed against her, the smell of cinnamon hot against her neck.
Edea. The name sends the chords of her heart searing.
---
Some nights, she takes people to her bed; never the same person twice. Pretty girls with long black hair and a striking profile, young boys with eyes the colour of the Trabian sea. She gives them an alias, whatever name strikes her fancy that week - maybe it's the name of the waitress who serves her blueberry pancakes the morning before, maybe it's the name of a Dolletian delicacy she hasn't tasted in years. Even if they knew her real name, she rationalises, it will only be light without dark, day without night. Rinoa is the Sorceress, and the Sorceress is Rinoa. It's better that they leave knowing ice on their skin and nothing else.
During the days, she grows thing. A little more Rinoa, a little less Sorceress. The strange girl in 14B, selling flower pots to make a living, and where does she get all those pots, anyway? She never leaves the flat, except at night. If her neighbours are fortunate enough to catch her retreating from the safeguard of her squallid little room to retrieve her mail, or because she's run out of milk, they ask. Oh, we're just curious, but... You've been living here a while now, everything okay? She smiles, because what else can she do? By the time she's done smiling they've forgotten whatever it was they asked and she's alone again, surrounded by four white walls.
He would be ashamed of you, no one says.
It comes as a shock - cold water on a colder heart - to realise she no longer cares.
---
Edea takes to sitting outside, listening to the waves crash against the shore, a blanket spread over her lap. She thinks she's a good fifty years too young for this life, but when she sees herself in the mirror, in the sea, in Cid's eyes... she's old, ancient, shriveled to nothing and flung aside.
The children - the ones who are still left - keep her at arm's length, ever doting. They still call her Matron, keeping to tradition. It doesn't matter that the woman who had pressed the cold cloth to their foreheads when they were feverish or baked them chocolate chip cookies every Sunday was the same woman who spread her arms, willing the world to crumble like the malignant growth it was, wishing for decay so that it - the Sorceress, the cyclic being breathing against her neck - could sleep. In those moments, there had been no children. They had been soldiers, seeds sowed and grown; she would have torn at their flesh with her teeth, spilled their blood like wine and smiled for it.
Do you regret it? The voices never go away, not even years later.
Edea rubs at her forehead. "No. I did what I could." She's talking out loud now. How long had she done so? Years? The eccentricities of a Sorceress were well on their way to becoming superstition, she noted grimly.
Did what you could, the voice repeats. It sounds like a snake slithering through grass as it prepares to strike. You let the girl go off on her own.
The girl. The words belled clearly, and Edea's fingers clutched at the blanket, taut enough to tear at the fabric. "It's her responsibility to decide who she's going to be."
Invisible fingers press against her abdomen. The day I came is the day it died. Do you remember?
"Cid and I had been trying to have children for some time." Edea turns her head, looking into no one's eyes. "You hollowed me out to make room for myself."
A fleeting sensation against her jaw; a cold kiss from no lips. You didn't have to say yes.
---
"Go somewhere cold," Edea says. "Somewhere bright. Somewhere you can see the sky."
Rinoa presses her rings to her lips. The dull moonlight shines in through the window, making her already gaunt cheekbones look more sunken in than normal. "When can I come back?"
Edea smiles, but there's something missing from it. "When you no longer see ghosts in every shadow."
---
"You didn't have to say yes," her dream says.
Rinoa forces her eyes open, pulling the blanket up to her chin. It's easy to see copper swirls in the dark, no one's eyes staring back at her. "Yes, I did."
For: alimond
Medium: Fic.
Request(s): "FFVIII: Rinoa/Edea/Ultimecia, not necessarily sexual."
Fandom(s): Final Fantasy VIII.
Character/pairings: Rinoa/Edea, mild Edea/Ultimecia.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, character death.
Summary: Ice echoes in her; her future, her past.
Notes: The Ulti part of it came out a little more vague than I had intended, unfortunately. Hope you like it!
The Hynian priest spits at her feet, calling her an abomination.
Things weren't supposed to turn out this way. They were supposed to be happy, she thinks, kneeling at his side; they way he might have done for her had they been given a real chance. His body is cold, and she can no longer hear his heartbeat. She used to be able to hear it from miles away; his life's tempo once laid itself out in front of her like music notes.
(Except she's an abomination.)
Rinoa wears white, while everyone else wears black. It had been on an utter whim. When Centra had been a nation, its colour of mourning had been white. She doesn't know what makes her think of it - she doesn't even like white. No hidden possibilities, no mystery. Maybe it's because he would have frowned at it, called her silly, tried to get her to change into something more appropriate. Maybe it's because she knows it's the closest thing to a wedding dress she'll ever get to wear now.
(Except she's an abomination.)
She leans on Edea, their fingers tightly intertwined. The woman is a safe harbour in the wake of her despair. When she's with Edea, there are no nightmares, not even the waking ones.
(Except...)
Rinoa stares up at the priest, her lips wooden. He's offering his blessings to the body, offering it - him - penance in its - his - journey to the next life. It would be very easy, Rinoa notes, for a strong gust of wind to send the priest tumbling into the rocks below. Perhaps a bloodclot dislodged and shot to his heart. A tumble on the steps of his church when no one's around, he cracks his head open and bleeds to death. She thinks all these things, begrudging him for the beating of his own heart when Squall lies cold. She's an abomination, she thinks, turning the word over again and again in her mind, feeling it weigh unspoken on her tongue.
Edea squeezes her hand. Rinoa can feel the life in it, and does nothing.
---
She dreams of Timber, of the dry forests burning to the ground as the Phoenix spreads it wings above them; a splash of fire against the grey sky.
She dreams of Ultimecia. The woman behind the power stops existing, little questions unanswered - what's your real name? did you have a lover? - as she becomes the Sorceress. Everything is there; all of history in the sweep of her hair, in the light behind her eyes.
She dreams of being consumed by the being that calls itself Sorceress, and wakes up smiling. Those are the worst times of all.
---
"We find each other," Edea says, stroking Rinoa's hair. "Power always follows power."
Power always follows power. Rinoa presses her lips to Edea's knuckles, and tastes only ice.
---
Cid is attentive and kind, even as his children become bloodstains on the battlefield. He grips his wife's hand, smiles, offers her pretty words like penance. Edea is hollow, the years carved as lines underneath her eyes even as she retains her youthful appearance, thrust upward slowly into the years she was previously impervious to.
She's nothing. She's nobody's mother. She could have consumed the world in flames, crushed it beneath her finger tips. It's gone now, torn from her as she spread some lie about wanting peace and sowed the seeds to defeat the undefeatable - as if it could have made a difference, she remembers thinking, grim words and grimmer laughter. It had made a difference; her little toy soldiers all in a row, stripped of their memories so they could stand and fight. They had done their job too well, and it - everything - had slipped between her fingers. Power belongs to the powerful, and she's just a weak woman with a weaker heart.
The girl, the Current, will realise this and leave. It's just a matter of when.
---
Rinoa tosses her bag into the trunk. Odine's bangle is tight, almost choking, around her wrist.
"Where're you headed, love?" the man asks. He looks kind, with sandy hair and a crooked smile. She closes her eyes and sees another man's name written on his lips, a chilly reminder of what she once had and since lost.
"Wherever," she says, and then adds, "Tromedia." It's where he's going.
She tastes the name in her mind. Tromedia. Snow and the moon, and no one knowing who - what - she is. It's not home. Home is six feet down, home is cold hands and hollow eyes. It's something else, pretty street lamps and cobbled roads. It's enough, she thinks, almost believing her own lie.
---
A hot bath, once a week. A second indulgence would damage her skin, Rinoa tells herself. She imagines cold hands pressed against her, the smell of cinnamon hot against her neck.
Edea. The name sends the chords of her heart searing.
---
Some nights, she takes people to her bed; never the same person twice. Pretty girls with long black hair and a striking profile, young boys with eyes the colour of the Trabian sea. She gives them an alias, whatever name strikes her fancy that week - maybe it's the name of the waitress who serves her blueberry pancakes the morning before, maybe it's the name of a Dolletian delicacy she hasn't tasted in years. Even if they knew her real name, she rationalises, it will only be light without dark, day without night. Rinoa is the Sorceress, and the Sorceress is Rinoa. It's better that they leave knowing ice on their skin and nothing else.
During the days, she grows thing. A little more Rinoa, a little less Sorceress. The strange girl in 14B, selling flower pots to make a living, and where does she get all those pots, anyway? She never leaves the flat, except at night. If her neighbours are fortunate enough to catch her retreating from the safeguard of her squallid little room to retrieve her mail, or because she's run out of milk, they ask. Oh, we're just curious, but... You've been living here a while now, everything okay? She smiles, because what else can she do? By the time she's done smiling they've forgotten whatever it was they asked and she's alone again, surrounded by four white walls.
He would be ashamed of you, no one says.
It comes as a shock - cold water on a colder heart - to realise she no longer cares.
---
Edea takes to sitting outside, listening to the waves crash against the shore, a blanket spread over her lap. She thinks she's a good fifty years too young for this life, but when she sees herself in the mirror, in the sea, in Cid's eyes... she's old, ancient, shriveled to nothing and flung aside.
The children - the ones who are still left - keep her at arm's length, ever doting. They still call her Matron, keeping to tradition. It doesn't matter that the woman who had pressed the cold cloth to their foreheads when they were feverish or baked them chocolate chip cookies every Sunday was the same woman who spread her arms, willing the world to crumble like the malignant growth it was, wishing for decay so that it - the Sorceress, the cyclic being breathing against her neck - could sleep. In those moments, there had been no children. They had been soldiers, seeds sowed and grown; she would have torn at their flesh with her teeth, spilled their blood like wine and smiled for it.
Do you regret it? The voices never go away, not even years later.
Edea rubs at her forehead. "No. I did what I could." She's talking out loud now. How long had she done so? Years? The eccentricities of a Sorceress were well on their way to becoming superstition, she noted grimly.
Did what you could, the voice repeats. It sounds like a snake slithering through grass as it prepares to strike. You let the girl go off on her own.
The girl. The words belled clearly, and Edea's fingers clutched at the blanket, taut enough to tear at the fabric. "It's her responsibility to decide who she's going to be."
Invisible fingers press against her abdomen. The day I came is the day it died. Do you remember?
"Cid and I had been trying to have children for some time." Edea turns her head, looking into no one's eyes. "You hollowed me out to make room for myself."
A fleeting sensation against her jaw; a cold kiss from no lips. You didn't have to say yes.
---
"Go somewhere cold," Edea says. "Somewhere bright. Somewhere you can see the sky."
Rinoa presses her rings to her lips. The dull moonlight shines in through the window, making her already gaunt cheekbones look more sunken in than normal. "When can I come back?"
Edea smiles, but there's something missing from it. "When you no longer see ghosts in every shadow."
---
"You didn't have to say yes," her dream says.
Rinoa forces her eyes open, pulling the blanket up to her chin. It's easy to see copper swirls in the dark, no one's eyes staring back at her. "Yes, I did."