Ashe Fic - Red
This is part of my personal canon, which some of you may know of (then again, it's been ages since I've written Ashe, so you may not remember), and is one of those things I almost can't bear to do to her, but...
Title: Red
Author: andromeda3116/Touch of Gray
Rating: PG for implication
Warnings: Angst. To the max.
Characters/Pairings: Ashe/Rasler
Fandom: FFXII Proper
Summary: She thinks of Rasler and roses and red. (Takes place not long after the events of the prologue.)
There must be something terribly wrong with the world, or else something terribly wrong with her.
What is it, she wonders, that makes everything leave her? Friends, family, husbands, and - And all the jewels and silk and servants of the throne, and all the beauty of the palace, and all the respect of her people. It's all dissolved and washed itself away, smothered by its own - by its own being, as if the simple fact that it existed at all made it too much to survive.
The sewers are cold and dank and smell of human waste and human shame. She folds in on herself here, in the darkest part of night, when even the fiends give up their searching and slouch back to their dens or hovels or graves. There's something horribly cathartic in being the only thing awake - the only thing alive - in a place and a time like this.
(She doesn't look down. Not now, not ever.)
The water plays at her ankles half-heartedly, a mockery more than an annoyance, and she draws her legs closer (it doesn't help). Somehow, this seems to fit. She just doesn't care to untangle it and understand why. Not now.
She thinks of Rasler and of roses. Of falling apart and picking up the pieces, only there aren't any left to put back together, all shattered to a very fine dust that does little but make her eyes water and her stomach turn. Like a bad storm - the aftermath is all rubble and horror and the absolute, overwhelming loneliness of having nowhere to turn and no one to turn to.
She thinks of Rasler and roses and red.
(She always liked the name Lucy.)
(A pity.)
Title: Red
Author: andromeda3116/Touch of Gray
Rating: PG for implication
Warnings: Angst. To the max.
Characters/Pairings: Ashe/Rasler
Fandom: FFXII Proper
Summary: She thinks of Rasler and roses and red. (Takes place not long after the events of the prologue.)
There must be something terribly wrong with the world, or else something terribly wrong with her.
What is it, she wonders, that makes everything leave her? Friends, family, husbands, and - And all the jewels and silk and servants of the throne, and all the beauty of the palace, and all the respect of her people. It's all dissolved and washed itself away, smothered by its own - by its own being, as if the simple fact that it existed at all made it too much to survive.
The sewers are cold and dank and smell of human waste and human shame. She folds in on herself here, in the darkest part of night, when even the fiends give up their searching and slouch back to their dens or hovels or graves. There's something horribly cathartic in being the only thing awake - the only thing alive - in a place and a time like this.
(She doesn't look down. Not now, not ever.)
The water plays at her ankles half-heartedly, a mockery more than an annoyance, and she draws her legs closer (it doesn't help). Somehow, this seems to fit. She just doesn't care to untangle it and understand why. Not now.
She thinks of Rasler and of roses. Of falling apart and picking up the pieces, only there aren't any left to put back together, all shattered to a very fine dust that does little but make her eyes water and her stomach turn. Like a bad storm - the aftermath is all rubble and horror and the absolute, overwhelming loneliness of having nowhere to turn and no one to turn to.
She thinks of Rasler and roses and red.
(She always liked the name Lucy.)
(A pity.)