Fic: Vagrant Story (and FFXII, and FFT), Rosencrantz/Callo
Title: Our Primary Subject
Author: mithrigil
Fandom: Ivalice in general: Vagrant Story, FFXII, and FFT
Characters: Jan Rosencrantz and Callo Merlose, with god knows how many others in the shadows.
Rating: R, because Jan is a rat and Callo is an academic (hecastotheism, anyone?)
Spoilers for Jan's stated affiliation and what happens to the world between FFXII and FFT, as well as implicit spoilers for Dr. Cid.
Warning for unabashed pretension.
Prompt: It could happen.
Our Primary Subject
Mithrigil Galtirglin
Her roommate, Sheli (it’s an abbreviation, for what, Callo has not asked) prefers to use the room to couple with Ron. Callo has decided that it’s none of her business. However much she’d rather finish the manifest in her own space, and not heft so many books both ways…. Concessions, though. If ever Callo needs the room to herself, she thus has a bargaining point.
Besides, it is not as if the library has any faults at all, save its inconvenience. Once there, ever comfort; not that Callo ever sees the tapestried walls, or remarks on the majesty of the cut-stone windows (and she ought-the story they tell is not without relevance to her own), or seeks out the secret passages or catacombs It is a matter of time entire. The dual-doctoral program has not killed her curiosity, merely detained it. A side effect of the matin pills.
One night, when the clerk woke her, he teased that she had built herself into a cage. He was right, upon appraisal, what with her books and fanned notes and typewriter and the dragon-carved back of her chair. She wishes his meaning had been entirely literal. She knows where she is going, where criminal psychology and religious history will take her, and the answer is nowhere at all. She came to Osterturm six years ago. She has not left. The walls of the VKP are higher, and without tapestries and storied windows.
Heresy, she types, is exclusive to spans of time in which religion is an actively unifying force. One does not speak of heretics in Antiquity; even within tribal kingdoms conquered by the great Empires, religious conflict was unnecessary and thus unpracticed. My colleague Massenet, in Stones: the Idols and Icons of Post-Galtean Kerwon, there is a better word for “debunks”, Callo decides, and takes up a pencil. debunks, she writes on the nearest sprawl. demystifies. unseats. discredits. All negative. But then, it ought be. deconstructs. No. dismantles.
“Dethrones,” a man says. A higher-voiced man, nasal, city-brogued. “You’re talking of great empires.”
“ ‘-dethrones the popular conception of polytheism, and proves that Southron cultures engaged in diverse worships, encompassing ancestral hagiolatry, pantheism, hecastotheism, and the nascent monotheism that prescribed the churches of Ajora, as well as the Kildean pantheon that later ventured north.’ Thank you.”
“Jan,” he offers, extending a half-gloved hand over her shoulder as far as the typewriter, between the columns of stacked books.
“Callo,” she says, and turns around to take it.
-
Our primary subject is an old man, grieving over the loss of his wife. Her visage is obscured in this first panel, because the book nearest her desk-portrait is closed, and will be revealed in panel six. In the first panel, we see this man with his hands in the tropic position that indicates distress, and is haloed by the candelabra at his back. This evokes his ascendancy to sainthood in panel twelve. All of his books are closed. His son, in the doorway, has turned his back on this display.
In the second panel, he is joined by what Viardot calls ‘the Angel of Science’. This is an apt characterization; note that the vibrant blue used to differentiate her from the humans is reprised in the stones our primary subject produces in her honor, beginning in panel seven. His eyes are open. The position of his hands is distrust; the position of the Angel’s is yearning. Constan speculates that the glass of the books was deliberately aged to imply the passage of time, but no records confirm this.
Panel three, in which the surroundings have grown darker still, clarifies their impending union. The books are still closed, but the primary subject’s hands are in the same position as the one of the Angel’s that we are given to see; desire. Panel four, the book on his desk is open; every scholarly discussion of this published agrees that this is what occupies the Angel’s missing hand in the third panel.
-
Jan’s eyes and hair are the same color. One shifts when the other does, with the light, with his position. He claims to be twenty-eight-Callo does not believe him-and is a good deal physically stronger than he appears, if his ease with Callo’s books and typewriter is any indication. The part of her that profiles before she asks it to has already grown suspect of his origin; his easy, southeastern accent is letter-perfect, but -etic, not -emic, and has not wavered once. He moves…not nimbly, not gracefully, but…well, more like a beast than a dancer. He is as aware of his surroundings as she is of all this, and anticipates every turn, every bramble.
She decides to assume that he is a Knight of the Peace and be done with it. He moves the way her interviewers move and speaks in the same tabula rasa fashion they speak. If he is anything else, she is powerless to stop him anyway. Besides, a fiend as knowledgeable of his own kind as Jan-if Jan is some kind of criminal, which Callo can’t put from her mind-is worth three times his mass in conversation.
“I had the same trouble, and worse, in school,” he says; she has explained not how, but why she conveys as many books as she does. He is trying to get her to ask after his education, after himself. She does. “Limberry,” he perhaps lies, “far from home, I know. But they suited my needs best.” What needs, she asks of him. “Political science. Historical in vein.” It is a non-answer. For how long? “Only through the second degree, not on to barrister.” And what has he done with this knowledge, “As much as I expected to, but less yet than I would have. Questions prescript answers, which in turn spawn more questions.” It is a flirtatious statement.
“And what questions does a Knight of the Peace seek answers to?”
She’s shown him-his reaction betrays nothing, which means that she is right or that he is a fabulous mummer. He smirks-his hair, eyes, anchor-beard, lip-piercing, all shift with it, glinting-and answers her. “What governs this world, and how, and how to subvert it.”
“Your answer is in the past,” she says, smiling, clutching what he’s allowed her to carry closer to her chest.
“And have you found it?”
“I seek it not.”
“That means you’ll find it,” he-teases, really, and it’s unsettling, and Callo shivers, her clothing suddenly feeling too tight, too short. “Will you tell me when you do?”
“I’ll tell the world entire,” she says honestly.
His fingers patter on the typewriter case. “But then, no man would benefit.”
-
Panel five introduces the stones-yet without color-and the equation. The Angel looks on in the tropic position for pride, from the same doorway as the now-absent son in panel one. Note that in this panel, the Angel’s distance from the primary subject and the presence of both her hands absolve her of opening the crucial book in panel six. This action reveals three things: the face of the deceased wife, which the Angel has of course adopted; the penultimate solution to the proof, and the contents of the book, which are not the same thing; and that our primary subject’s right hand is now haloed in a filtered version of the Angel’s characterizing blue. This deliberate commentary on the head-haloes of saints has been the subject of much scholarly discourse, none of which I ascribe to, for in all cases but one the scholars neglect to take into account the possible sources of this parable, and in the outstanding case (Tassens) a largely irrelevant myth is projected.
Researches into the Cataclysm itself, especially Ground Zero: Sochen, long ago produced the hub of these blue stones; the means of their activation remains elusive to scientific pursuits, but the resemblance is unmistakable. However, the presence of Antediluvian Archadian mining equipment as far south as central Kerwon, unscathed during the tragedy and merely forgotten, suggests that the proliferation of the stones-the story-is not narrative, but recollection. The Architect of the Osterturm Library where these windows are displayed remains unknown, but the edifice itself dates back to the Old Valendian and predates the Cataclysm by over a century. Our primary subject is an historical person, not a symbol.
To resume; the seventh panel heralds the dissemination of the stones; the man’s hands, the haloed offering and the gloved receiving, are displayed over an enlarged version of the map in panel six; the contents of the book. The Kildean reads “person(s) who desires(s)” This proverb is completed in panel nine.
-
“So you’re not dispossessed after all,” he chides, reaching for the doorknob, which is conspicuously vacant of the brocade ribbon Sheli uses to warn Callo not to enter. He holds the books and typewriter to the wall with his hip. Callo tries not to gape at that, or the slack smile on his jaw, or the-well, when a part of him shifts, a part of him shifts. He opens the door, then slides back to let her through first. “If I may enter to put these down.”
“-Yes, of course,” she answers, glad to be past him and hide what she suspects might be a blush. She sets the books down on her bed, goes to the gas-lantern and holds the knob until it clicks to life. “On the desk,” she remembers to say, when she hears him shuffle in behind her.
She’s still staring into the faint fire when she hears the books in his arms start settling down, gentle thumps, efficient, reverent. She hears his; she hears him breathe; she hears a glottal little hitch in his throat that may be recognition or approval or something else entirely; she does not turn around just yet. She waits.
“You’re either not here long, or ready to leave,” he assesses, the same knowing, prying tone to his voice as before. The accent suits it well, whether it’s his real one or not.
“And here I thought I was the psychologist,” she prods right back. “Surely I am mistaken in that.”
Another sound, and him nearer, and she takes a moment to understand it. The toe of his boot-on the boxes under her bed, still full. She looks up from the lamp, but not behind her, not to where he is.
“Both,” he answers for her. “So Heidricht has already drafted you.”
“The abstract was enough for her,” Callo admits, holding her back teeth back from a sudden chatter. “It grew out of prior work.”
“What did you discover?” His tone is lower, his breath is closer. This cannot be right.
“-The longevity of-of several cults. The connections between the Antediluvian panth-”
His hands-cover hers, on the lamp, on her bedspread. His nails are gnawed down to the skin, red-rimmed. “That can’t be all,” he says into the nape of her neck, the cold ring though his lip so smooth on her prickling hairs.
“It can.”
“Not with Heidricht.” His clothing is as rough-hide as his hands, along her spine, which shivers-“She can’t see only potential in you.”
Callo stills her teeth and holds them there. “What did she see in you, I wonder.”
The gaslight sputters to black.
-
The son reappears in panel eight, which serves not only to reintroduce him as again in contention with our primary subject, but to delay the completion of the proverb. The son’s combined hand positions are distrust in the left, an echo of his father’s, and hatred in the right. Again, we see only his back, and most of his silhouette obscures the surroundings. The Angel is absent-she and the son share no panels but ten-and the hands of the primary subject are obscured.
Everything is revealed in panel nine. The magic of the great stones in the primary subject’s hands; their collected position, of love and enquiry; the son’s chosen weapon, which is a thing of powder and fire, something terrestrial as opposed to celestial; and the closing of the proverb, which is translated as “inability to manipulate”. Whether the intended meaning is “you cannot manipulate a person who desires” or “a person who desires cannot manipulate” is the subject of much contention. I ascribe to the latter, and panel ten is my lynchpin reason.
The son’s weapon projects something into the stone; this penetration and the expulsion of energy dominate the panel. The Angel is present above it all, and much of the energy is directly diverted into her. The patterns on the glass that comprises her contain the text of the equation, painstakingly carved and stained, as well as other Kildean that I am in the process of translating. This follows an irregular pattern of characters; Kildean is a metric language, and only on the walls of Leá Monde have I encountered patterns of five instead of four. This is also the last appearance of the Angel. Perhaps this is in error, but her face is no longer that of the wife.
In panel eleven, the son and the primary subject reconcile. Note the similarity of their faces. The red glass of the primary subject’s wound is too densely dyed to be illuminated from behind, and so one can only perceive that there is text in the blood by viewing the actual panel at about a handsbreadth’s distance. Note also that the son’s tears are of the same blue glass as the stones.
--
She remembers how his fingers drummed the typewriter case. They’re doing the same to the backs of her hands, her wrists, her forearms now. The pads of his fingers are like the glue in book-bindings. Something in her lurches and tightens with every flickering press.
“I look up,” he whispers. It’s awful. “Man seldom does that these days.”
--
The final tableau is, as stated, the subject’s exaltation. As a saint, he is framed in blue; his hands are benevolence and caution. The censure of his genitals is the equation-the same color glass as his blood-and he is solitary, against the background of the map as in panel seven. The map itself, however, is changed, desolate. The allusions to the Cataclysm are pointed, and are often cited as the strongest argument for this series as an allegory; man’s quest for knowledge destroyed the world.
That accusation begs the question, which has not yet been asked: Why then is this displayed in a Library?
Dr. Joshua Johnsson
Universidad Bervenia
--
“-Oh! Oh, er, sorry Cal, I didn’t mean to interrupt!”
The breath that she’d been holding snaps out of her. “You aren’t, Sheli. Jan was just leaving, wasn’t he?”
---
.
.
Author: mithrigil
Fandom: Ivalice in general: Vagrant Story, FFXII, and FFT
Characters: Jan Rosencrantz and Callo Merlose, with god knows how many others in the shadows.
Rating: R, because Jan is a rat and Callo is an academic (hecastotheism, anyone?)
Spoilers for Jan's stated affiliation and what happens to the world between FFXII and FFT, as well as implicit spoilers for Dr. Cid.
Warning for unabashed pretension.
Prompt: It could happen.
Our Primary Subject
Mithrigil Galtirglin
Her roommate, Sheli (it’s an abbreviation, for what, Callo has not asked) prefers to use the room to couple with Ron. Callo has decided that it’s none of her business. However much she’d rather finish the manifest in her own space, and not heft so many books both ways…. Concessions, though. If ever Callo needs the room to herself, she thus has a bargaining point.
Besides, it is not as if the library has any faults at all, save its inconvenience. Once there, ever comfort; not that Callo ever sees the tapestried walls, or remarks on the majesty of the cut-stone windows (and she ought-the story they tell is not without relevance to her own), or seeks out the secret passages or catacombs It is a matter of time entire. The dual-doctoral program has not killed her curiosity, merely detained it. A side effect of the matin pills.
One night, when the clerk woke her, he teased that she had built herself into a cage. He was right, upon appraisal, what with her books and fanned notes and typewriter and the dragon-carved back of her chair. She wishes his meaning had been entirely literal. She knows where she is going, where criminal psychology and religious history will take her, and the answer is nowhere at all. She came to Osterturm six years ago. She has not left. The walls of the VKP are higher, and without tapestries and storied windows.
Heresy, she types, is exclusive to spans of time in which religion is an actively unifying force. One does not speak of heretics in Antiquity; even within tribal kingdoms conquered by the great Empires, religious conflict was unnecessary and thus unpracticed. My colleague Massenet, in Stones: the Idols and Icons of Post-Galtean Kerwon, there is a better word for “debunks”, Callo decides, and takes up a pencil. debunks, she writes on the nearest sprawl. demystifies. unseats. discredits. All negative. But then, it ought be. deconstructs. No. dismantles.
“Dethrones,” a man says. A higher-voiced man, nasal, city-brogued. “You’re talking of great empires.”
“ ‘-dethrones the popular conception of polytheism, and proves that Southron cultures engaged in diverse worships, encompassing ancestral hagiolatry, pantheism, hecastotheism, and the nascent monotheism that prescribed the churches of Ajora, as well as the Kildean pantheon that later ventured north.’ Thank you.”
“Jan,” he offers, extending a half-gloved hand over her shoulder as far as the typewriter, between the columns of stacked books.
“Callo,” she says, and turns around to take it.
-
Our primary subject is an old man, grieving over the loss of his wife. Her visage is obscured in this first panel, because the book nearest her desk-portrait is closed, and will be revealed in panel six. In the first panel, we see this man with his hands in the tropic position that indicates distress, and is haloed by the candelabra at his back. This evokes his ascendancy to sainthood in panel twelve. All of his books are closed. His son, in the doorway, has turned his back on this display.
In the second panel, he is joined by what Viardot calls ‘the Angel of Science’. This is an apt characterization; note that the vibrant blue used to differentiate her from the humans is reprised in the stones our primary subject produces in her honor, beginning in panel seven. His eyes are open. The position of his hands is distrust; the position of the Angel’s is yearning. Constan speculates that the glass of the books was deliberately aged to imply the passage of time, but no records confirm this.
Panel three, in which the surroundings have grown darker still, clarifies their impending union. The books are still closed, but the primary subject’s hands are in the same position as the one of the Angel’s that we are given to see; desire. Panel four, the book on his desk is open; every scholarly discussion of this published agrees that this is what occupies the Angel’s missing hand in the third panel.
-
Jan’s eyes and hair are the same color. One shifts when the other does, with the light, with his position. He claims to be twenty-eight-Callo does not believe him-and is a good deal physically stronger than he appears, if his ease with Callo’s books and typewriter is any indication. The part of her that profiles before she asks it to has already grown suspect of his origin; his easy, southeastern accent is letter-perfect, but -etic, not -emic, and has not wavered once. He moves…not nimbly, not gracefully, but…well, more like a beast than a dancer. He is as aware of his surroundings as she is of all this, and anticipates every turn, every bramble.
She decides to assume that he is a Knight of the Peace and be done with it. He moves the way her interviewers move and speaks in the same tabula rasa fashion they speak. If he is anything else, she is powerless to stop him anyway. Besides, a fiend as knowledgeable of his own kind as Jan-if Jan is some kind of criminal, which Callo can’t put from her mind-is worth three times his mass in conversation.
“I had the same trouble, and worse, in school,” he says; she has explained not how, but why she conveys as many books as she does. He is trying to get her to ask after his education, after himself. She does. “Limberry,” he perhaps lies, “far from home, I know. But they suited my needs best.” What needs, she asks of him. “Political science. Historical in vein.” It is a non-answer. For how long? “Only through the second degree, not on to barrister.” And what has he done with this knowledge, “As much as I expected to, but less yet than I would have. Questions prescript answers, which in turn spawn more questions.” It is a flirtatious statement.
“And what questions does a Knight of the Peace seek answers to?”
She’s shown him-his reaction betrays nothing, which means that she is right or that he is a fabulous mummer. He smirks-his hair, eyes, anchor-beard, lip-piercing, all shift with it, glinting-and answers her. “What governs this world, and how, and how to subvert it.”
“Your answer is in the past,” she says, smiling, clutching what he’s allowed her to carry closer to her chest.
“And have you found it?”
“I seek it not.”
“That means you’ll find it,” he-teases, really, and it’s unsettling, and Callo shivers, her clothing suddenly feeling too tight, too short. “Will you tell me when you do?”
“I’ll tell the world entire,” she says honestly.
His fingers patter on the typewriter case. “But then, no man would benefit.”
-
Panel five introduces the stones-yet without color-and the equation. The Angel looks on in the tropic position for pride, from the same doorway as the now-absent son in panel one. Note that in this panel, the Angel’s distance from the primary subject and the presence of both her hands absolve her of opening the crucial book in panel six. This action reveals three things: the face of the deceased wife, which the Angel has of course adopted; the penultimate solution to the proof, and the contents of the book, which are not the same thing; and that our primary subject’s right hand is now haloed in a filtered version of the Angel’s characterizing blue. This deliberate commentary on the head-haloes of saints has been the subject of much scholarly discourse, none of which I ascribe to, for in all cases but one the scholars neglect to take into account the possible sources of this parable, and in the outstanding case (Tassens) a largely irrelevant myth is projected.
Researches into the Cataclysm itself, especially Ground Zero: Sochen, long ago produced the hub of these blue stones; the means of their activation remains elusive to scientific pursuits, but the resemblance is unmistakable. However, the presence of Antediluvian Archadian mining equipment as far south as central Kerwon, unscathed during the tragedy and merely forgotten, suggests that the proliferation of the stones-the story-is not narrative, but recollection. The Architect of the Osterturm Library where these windows are displayed remains unknown, but the edifice itself dates back to the Old Valendian and predates the Cataclysm by over a century. Our primary subject is an historical person, not a symbol.
To resume; the seventh panel heralds the dissemination of the stones; the man’s hands, the haloed offering and the gloved receiving, are displayed over an enlarged version of the map in panel six; the contents of the book. The Kildean reads “person(s) who desires(s)” This proverb is completed in panel nine.
-
“So you’re not dispossessed after all,” he chides, reaching for the doorknob, which is conspicuously vacant of the brocade ribbon Sheli uses to warn Callo not to enter. He holds the books and typewriter to the wall with his hip. Callo tries not to gape at that, or the slack smile on his jaw, or the-well, when a part of him shifts, a part of him shifts. He opens the door, then slides back to let her through first. “If I may enter to put these down.”
“-Yes, of course,” she answers, glad to be past him and hide what she suspects might be a blush. She sets the books down on her bed, goes to the gas-lantern and holds the knob until it clicks to life. “On the desk,” she remembers to say, when she hears him shuffle in behind her.
She’s still staring into the faint fire when she hears the books in his arms start settling down, gentle thumps, efficient, reverent. She hears his; she hears him breathe; she hears a glottal little hitch in his throat that may be recognition or approval or something else entirely; she does not turn around just yet. She waits.
“You’re either not here long, or ready to leave,” he assesses, the same knowing, prying tone to his voice as before. The accent suits it well, whether it’s his real one or not.
“And here I thought I was the psychologist,” she prods right back. “Surely I am mistaken in that.”
Another sound, and him nearer, and she takes a moment to understand it. The toe of his boot-on the boxes under her bed, still full. She looks up from the lamp, but not behind her, not to where he is.
“Both,” he answers for her. “So Heidricht has already drafted you.”
“The abstract was enough for her,” Callo admits, holding her back teeth back from a sudden chatter. “It grew out of prior work.”
“What did you discover?” His tone is lower, his breath is closer. This cannot be right.
“-The longevity of-of several cults. The connections between the Antediluvian panth-”
His hands-cover hers, on the lamp, on her bedspread. His nails are gnawed down to the skin, red-rimmed. “That can’t be all,” he says into the nape of her neck, the cold ring though his lip so smooth on her prickling hairs.
“It can.”
“Not with Heidricht.” His clothing is as rough-hide as his hands, along her spine, which shivers-“She can’t see only potential in you.”
Callo stills her teeth and holds them there. “What did she see in you, I wonder.”
The gaslight sputters to black.
-
The son reappears in panel eight, which serves not only to reintroduce him as again in contention with our primary subject, but to delay the completion of the proverb. The son’s combined hand positions are distrust in the left, an echo of his father’s, and hatred in the right. Again, we see only his back, and most of his silhouette obscures the surroundings. The Angel is absent-she and the son share no panels but ten-and the hands of the primary subject are obscured.
Everything is revealed in panel nine. The magic of the great stones in the primary subject’s hands; their collected position, of love and enquiry; the son’s chosen weapon, which is a thing of powder and fire, something terrestrial as opposed to celestial; and the closing of the proverb, which is translated as “inability to manipulate”. Whether the intended meaning is “you cannot manipulate a person who desires” or “a person who desires cannot manipulate” is the subject of much contention. I ascribe to the latter, and panel ten is my lynchpin reason.
The son’s weapon projects something into the stone; this penetration and the expulsion of energy dominate the panel. The Angel is present above it all, and much of the energy is directly diverted into her. The patterns on the glass that comprises her contain the text of the equation, painstakingly carved and stained, as well as other Kildean that I am in the process of translating. This follows an irregular pattern of characters; Kildean is a metric language, and only on the walls of Leá Monde have I encountered patterns of five instead of four. This is also the last appearance of the Angel. Perhaps this is in error, but her face is no longer that of the wife.
In panel eleven, the son and the primary subject reconcile. Note the similarity of their faces. The red glass of the primary subject’s wound is too densely dyed to be illuminated from behind, and so one can only perceive that there is text in the blood by viewing the actual panel at about a handsbreadth’s distance. Note also that the son’s tears are of the same blue glass as the stones.
--
She remembers how his fingers drummed the typewriter case. They’re doing the same to the backs of her hands, her wrists, her forearms now. The pads of his fingers are like the glue in book-bindings. Something in her lurches and tightens with every flickering press.
“I look up,” he whispers. It’s awful. “Man seldom does that these days.”
--
The final tableau is, as stated, the subject’s exaltation. As a saint, he is framed in blue; his hands are benevolence and caution. The censure of his genitals is the equation-the same color glass as his blood-and he is solitary, against the background of the map as in panel seven. The map itself, however, is changed, desolate. The allusions to the Cataclysm are pointed, and are often cited as the strongest argument for this series as an allegory; man’s quest for knowledge destroyed the world.
That accusation begs the question, which has not yet been asked: Why then is this displayed in a Library?
Dr. Joshua Johnsson
Universidad Bervenia
--
“-Oh! Oh, er, sorry Cal, I didn’t mean to interrupt!”
The breath that she’d been holding snaps out of her. “You aren’t, Sheli. Jan was just leaving, wasn’t he?”
---
.
.