FFXII, xxxHOLiC, TotA, and a meme.
First:
Comment with a character and I'll give you three facts about them from my personal canon.
Second:
...do you remember this post? Yeah... So six months later, I'm trying to get some more prompts done. Because, uh, in the scale of life, fandom > college.
Written for saave:
Final Fantasy XII - BalthierxFran. Perhaps with hints at BalthierxVaan. &prompt being something about dinner etiquette
Sometime post-game, no spoilers. Balthier's a dandy, Fran's-- not.
Dandy
For all the years spent flying through the sky, Balthier's still very much a son of Archadia. He fixes his cuffs with the same foppish attention of the politicians, and preens in front of mirrors, or anything with a reflective surface, touching his face and fixing his hair with slender, well-cared for fingers. He is, Fran thinks, something of a dandy, where dinner etiquette clashed with piracy, and won. He sorts through treasure with the quickness of a pirate, and the eye of a connoisseur, and he gossips like a coquette, the light, airy words that have been humming all the years Fran has known him.
"And he didn't know the differences between the forks, can you imagine," Balthier says, and Fran can only say, dryly, "barely." Balthier laughs, sounding delighted, and Fran watches him lift a heavy ring, and discard it with barely a glance. "Plated," he says, mostly unnecessarily. "I asked him what, exactly, Penelo sees in him. I haven't the slightest."
"Neither have I," Fran says, and this must be the right response, because Balthier's laughter gets brighter, and he leans over to dangle a bracelet into her hand, delicate links of gold crusted with leaf-green gems.
"Charming, isn't it?" Balthier asks idly, and he twists it around her wrist, hooks the clasp with a pinch of his fingers. Fran lifts her hand, inspects the bracelet more closely, and wonders how many gil they'll be able to sell it for. Enough, she thinks, to fix the shake in the Strahl's left wing.
"It's pretty enough," Fran says slowly, and when Balthier looks at her sharply, she says, "I don't care for hume jewelry."
"Your tastes." He sounds a little accusing, and Fran smiles, says, "I find other things charming."
"Indeed?" Balthier's preening now, a cocksure smile and a jaunty tilt to his body, and when Fran nods, he prods, hungry eyes. "What do you find quite so charming?"
Fran lets him fit himself against her, an arm about her waist, another arm on her neck. She wonders if he'll dip her, some dance he's never stepped out of, and she lets him pull her face close to his, her mouth next to his cheek. His skin is cool, smooth, and she presses her lips to his check, then the curve of his jaw, near his ear. When he hums questioningly, she smiles, then whispers, "liverspots."
He drops her in the middle of the dip, an entirely shocked expression on his face, and she reaches out, grabs his arm as she falls. They go down in a tumble, arms and legs entwined, and when her elbow is in his stomach, and his legs are spread over hers, he asks, horrified, "liverspots?"
They're tangled tight together, but she turns her head, kisses the back of his hand, and says, "it's one of your qualities."
"I see," Balthier says with an edge to his voice, but he takes her kiss without fuss, gives one in return with little thought. She kisses him again, and once more, and when she's pressing her lips against his bare shoulder, he twines his fingers with hers, and pulls her wrist close so he can kiss the skin around the bracelet.
"It is charming," he says, stubborn to the end. "Pretty little things are always charming. It's the nature of the thing."
"Like Vaan?" Fran asks, and Balthier's shoulder shakes beneath her mouth, laughter that's wild in its rules.
"Exactly like Vaan."
Written for joanaseta:
Haruka and Shizuka, prompt: Watanuki
Uh, pre-series. As in, Haruka's time. He knows his grandson will be more broken, so he marries a fox.
Blood
His grandson is more broken.
He knows it, or he thinks he knows it. He dreams at night, sees existence in the body of a boy, and he knows his grandson is at the side of existence. He dreams it, his blood in another body and another life, and he sees everything spin, slow, stop, pause at a footstep. Spin again. And his grandson, he dreams, stands, fires arrows. Bleeds.
His grandson will be an archer.
He marries a fox, because existence is a tricky thing, for mortals and immortals alike. The fox is a beautiful thing, quick and sly and talented at hiding between humans. There's something in her smile, feral, and he marries her, surrounded by family and friends. Her eyes are bigger, blacker, than his childhood sweetheart's, and his mother sighs over her, murmurs, "such a beauty." And the fox is a beauty, the way she spins their shrine against the world. A twist to the lines of existence (in the body of a boy not born yet, who his grandson will stand beside), and she makes a cocoon, her trappings in the human world.
She has a son, a daughter. He kisses her mouth, feral, and thanks her, mortal, and when she licks his cheek, he feels her nails dig into his flesh. But foxes are powerful, quick and sly and beautiful, some spinning between mortal and immortal, and his grandson will have the blood of a fox.
She leaves him before their children are grown, and he watches her go, hiding between humans on a sunny day. Her hair is long, is the last thing through the gate, and when she leaves the shrine, he feels the cocoon weaken, the threads of existence (not yet born, not yet standing, not yet-- a pause, a step--) loosen. He dreams, and he feels the shape of the bow, the snap of the string. The burn of the world.
His grandson is born on a rainy day. His grandson is more broken.
It goes quickly then, a spin, a pause, a step. The fox waits for him beyond the shrine's gates, impatient and beautiful, and when Shizuka is seven, nearly eight, Haruka feels the lines of the shrine slowly fall apart. He spends his nights in the library, slips of parchment and lines of ink, and when Shizuka comes home from school, he teaches him how to set the wards, how to smooth his thumb over the cracks of the shrine. How, with his hands on Shizuka's shoulders, to hold a bow.
He dies on an empty day, between one festival and another. His son is in the library, and his daughter is in the yard. His grandson is playing in the street. He's sitting in the sun, folding a crane, and the fox is standing in front of him, quick and sly and more beautiful than before. Time spins in strange ways.
"Such a beauty," he says, because her eyes are bigger, blacker, than others'. She smiles for him, licks his cheek, and her nails dig into his shoulder.
"You dreamt too much," she says, and she lowers him to the wood of the porch, smoothing out his skin. She sits beside him, her kimono falling over the edge, her hair spilling over his chest. "I've been waiting."
"Our grandson," he says, tries to explain. She laughs at him like windchimes, and he knows, he thinks he knows, that she'll never understand, because she's different. She's young, beautiful, and she'll be so still when Shizuka's grandsons are grown, and their grandsons are grown. Her spin is slower than theirs, a graceful fall of silk and hair while theirs is a tumble. She's a fox, and he's a man, and his grandson is more broken.
"I tried," he turns his face against the wood, tries to see the street past the gates, "to help him." Her laughter is brighter, and when he touches her hair, she turns her face, lies her tongue against his wrist.
"You can't change it," she tells him. "It was supposed to be this way. You shouldn't have dreamt so long. I wasn't meant to wait."
He wants to ask why, but it's an empty day, and old men are empty men, left to dream in the sunshine, paper cranes half-folded around them. Existence is unfolding around him, a step and a pause and stand upright, draw your bow to yourself. He can hear his grandson laughing, and his daughter singing in the yard, with eyes like her mother's. Eyes like the fox's. His grandson is more broken.
"It," the fox murmurs, and she's cradling his face, kissing him with feral mouth, "is hitsuzen."
Written for overlimits:
Jade/Nephry - overworked
Pre-game, small spoilers for Jade's past. It-- sorta became more Jade->Nebilim than Jade/Nephry. Oops. D:
The Replica Song
Another replica died during the night, spitting blood from its mouth. He turns it over with the edge of a scalpel, lies the edge of the blade against the throat, then down the stomach. The rat's body splits open smoothly, and he holds back skin with the dull edge of the scalpel, pulls the cut further open with a thumb and forefinger. The organs slip, feel slimy through his gloves, and he finds the heart.
It's still intact. It should be beating. A touch of the scalpel has the heart cut free, and he lifts it out, smaller than his thumbnail. He holds it cupped in his hand, and when he opens it wide, the valves are clear, and what blood was left in it is clean, a rich red that pearls on his hand.
It should be beating.
He'll try again tomorrow.
x
The next time, both the replica and the original die, blood in the replica's mouth and whiskers, a rattle and sigh from the original. Their hearts aren't broken, nor are their stomachs, their lungs, their liver and brain and intestines. Kidneys, gallbladders, everything is clean. He opens them all, takes notes and draws sketches, quick slashes of ink on the paper. There's no reason for a rattle and blood in whiskers, and he wonders if it'd be the same with humans. If Professor Nebilim will have blood on her mouth.
There's something missing, something he can't think of, on the haze of his mind, and he doesn't know what it is, what could be missing that leads to a rattle of blood. He turns over the bodies, cuts them open with tiny movements, bodies the length of his hand, and deaths the size of his thumb. He empties the rats, then fills them back up, and wonders why they die.
"You should stop," Nephry says, and she lays her hands on his shoulders, rests her chin on the top of his head. He would reach and touch her, pat the back of her hands, but his gloves are slick and wet. He hums instead, flips the scalpel in his hand, and pushes a liver, looks for something he can't find.
"There's something missing," he says, and Nephry's hands are loose. He wonders if she'll step back, if she'll step closer. He wants to touch her hand, but she hates it when he touches her with bloody gloves. She hates it when he touches her.
The hearts should be beating.
"What is it?" she asks, and he frowns, leans closer, trying to find something in the way the blood is smeared across the tray. Words, maybe, or a picture. Some kind of hint of what he's missing, what Professor Nebilim tried to teach him. Tries to teach him.
"They should be beating," he says, and he cuts open a heart, shows it to her. Her face is pale, but she looks at the valves, at the clean blood, watches him smear it between thumb and finger. When he catches her wrist, she shudders, but she doesn't step away. She doesn't step closer.
"Don't work too hard." She kisses the top of his head, like their mother used to, and then she walks away swiftly, sensible heels on a sensible floor, where the blood is easy to wipe up. Where the ashes don't stay for long. He wonders why her heart was beating so hard, blood heavy in her wrist.
x
The original is lying in the bottom of the cage, listless and faint-breathed, but the replica's still alive. Three days, the longest so far. It's throwing itself at the cage, baring its teeth at him, but it's alive. Its heart, lungs, brain are all beating, quick and strong, and he reaches in the cage, grabs the base of its tail. It twists as he pulls it out of the cage, trying to bite him, and he jostles it.
He pins the rat to the tray, thumb and forefinger pressing at the base of the neck, and the rat's limbs scrabble at the smooth metal, nails scrittering. He flips his scalpel with his other hand, lies the edge against the side of the rat, and when the rat lies still, chest heaving for breath, he cuts. It's smooth, clean, deep, and the thrashing smears blood, like words spelled out in the dregs of tea.
It's easy to flip the rat over, its jaws weak and flimsy when it tries to bite him, and he presses his thumb inside, finds the heart, pitter-patter-fast like Nephry's footsteps, sensible shoes on sensible floors when she runs away, face pale and eyes wet. He wonders if Professor Nebilim will wear sensible shoes again, if her mouth will be bloody.
The heart's beating against the underside of his thumb, faster than his heart, and he presses his other thumb against the rat's head, the underside of its jaw, turning it up. He can see the throat move, shallow breathing, and he wonders if Professor Nebilim will be able talk. If her lungs will be clean, her brain and kidney and liver. Her heart.
The heart's not beating.
He wonders what he's missing.
Third:
Lexi's baby shower was today. And-- I found out why she had to go the hospital last week. The baby broke some of Lexi's ribs. As in, hairline fractures. Down her right side. as;fkj OW. And she's on Lortab for all the pain. Like, the kidney, which got horribly squashed, and her fractured ribs. asd;fkjl The sooner the baby's born, the better. Come on, baby. We're just waiting for you~ ♥
Comment with a character and I'll give you three facts about them from my personal canon.
Second:
...do you remember this post? Yeah... So six months later, I'm trying to get some more prompts done. Because, uh, in the scale of life, fandom > college.
Written for saave:
Final Fantasy XII - BalthierxFran. Perhaps with hints at BalthierxVaan. &prompt being something about dinner etiquette
Sometime post-game, no spoilers. Balthier's a dandy, Fran's-- not.
Dandy
For all the years spent flying through the sky, Balthier's still very much a son of Archadia. He fixes his cuffs with the same foppish attention of the politicians, and preens in front of mirrors, or anything with a reflective surface, touching his face and fixing his hair with slender, well-cared for fingers. He is, Fran thinks, something of a dandy, where dinner etiquette clashed with piracy, and won. He sorts through treasure with the quickness of a pirate, and the eye of a connoisseur, and he gossips like a coquette, the light, airy words that have been humming all the years Fran has known him.
"And he didn't know the differences between the forks, can you imagine," Balthier says, and Fran can only say, dryly, "barely." Balthier laughs, sounding delighted, and Fran watches him lift a heavy ring, and discard it with barely a glance. "Plated," he says, mostly unnecessarily. "I asked him what, exactly, Penelo sees in him. I haven't the slightest."
"Neither have I," Fran says, and this must be the right response, because Balthier's laughter gets brighter, and he leans over to dangle a bracelet into her hand, delicate links of gold crusted with leaf-green gems.
"Charming, isn't it?" Balthier asks idly, and he twists it around her wrist, hooks the clasp with a pinch of his fingers. Fran lifts her hand, inspects the bracelet more closely, and wonders how many gil they'll be able to sell it for. Enough, she thinks, to fix the shake in the Strahl's left wing.
"It's pretty enough," Fran says slowly, and when Balthier looks at her sharply, she says, "I don't care for hume jewelry."
"Your tastes." He sounds a little accusing, and Fran smiles, says, "I find other things charming."
"Indeed?" Balthier's preening now, a cocksure smile and a jaunty tilt to his body, and when Fran nods, he prods, hungry eyes. "What do you find quite so charming?"
Fran lets him fit himself against her, an arm about her waist, another arm on her neck. She wonders if he'll dip her, some dance he's never stepped out of, and she lets him pull her face close to his, her mouth next to his cheek. His skin is cool, smooth, and she presses her lips to his check, then the curve of his jaw, near his ear. When he hums questioningly, she smiles, then whispers, "liverspots."
He drops her in the middle of the dip, an entirely shocked expression on his face, and she reaches out, grabs his arm as she falls. They go down in a tumble, arms and legs entwined, and when her elbow is in his stomach, and his legs are spread over hers, he asks, horrified, "liverspots?"
They're tangled tight together, but she turns her head, kisses the back of his hand, and says, "it's one of your qualities."
"I see," Balthier says with an edge to his voice, but he takes her kiss without fuss, gives one in return with little thought. She kisses him again, and once more, and when she's pressing her lips against his bare shoulder, he twines his fingers with hers, and pulls her wrist close so he can kiss the skin around the bracelet.
"It is charming," he says, stubborn to the end. "Pretty little things are always charming. It's the nature of the thing."
"Like Vaan?" Fran asks, and Balthier's shoulder shakes beneath her mouth, laughter that's wild in its rules.
"Exactly like Vaan."
Written for joanaseta:
Haruka and Shizuka, prompt: Watanuki
Uh, pre-series. As in, Haruka's time. He knows his grandson will be more broken, so he marries a fox.
Blood
His grandson is more broken.
He knows it, or he thinks he knows it. He dreams at night, sees existence in the body of a boy, and he knows his grandson is at the side of existence. He dreams it, his blood in another body and another life, and he sees everything spin, slow, stop, pause at a footstep. Spin again. And his grandson, he dreams, stands, fires arrows. Bleeds.
His grandson will be an archer.
He marries a fox, because existence is a tricky thing, for mortals and immortals alike. The fox is a beautiful thing, quick and sly and talented at hiding between humans. There's something in her smile, feral, and he marries her, surrounded by family and friends. Her eyes are bigger, blacker, than his childhood sweetheart's, and his mother sighs over her, murmurs, "such a beauty." And the fox is a beauty, the way she spins their shrine against the world. A twist to the lines of existence (in the body of a boy not born yet, who his grandson will stand beside), and she makes a cocoon, her trappings in the human world.
She has a son, a daughter. He kisses her mouth, feral, and thanks her, mortal, and when she licks his cheek, he feels her nails dig into his flesh. But foxes are powerful, quick and sly and beautiful, some spinning between mortal and immortal, and his grandson will have the blood of a fox.
She leaves him before their children are grown, and he watches her go, hiding between humans on a sunny day. Her hair is long, is the last thing through the gate, and when she leaves the shrine, he feels the cocoon weaken, the threads of existence (not yet born, not yet standing, not yet-- a pause, a step--) loosen. He dreams, and he feels the shape of the bow, the snap of the string. The burn of the world.
His grandson is born on a rainy day. His grandson is more broken.
It goes quickly then, a spin, a pause, a step. The fox waits for him beyond the shrine's gates, impatient and beautiful, and when Shizuka is seven, nearly eight, Haruka feels the lines of the shrine slowly fall apart. He spends his nights in the library, slips of parchment and lines of ink, and when Shizuka comes home from school, he teaches him how to set the wards, how to smooth his thumb over the cracks of the shrine. How, with his hands on Shizuka's shoulders, to hold a bow.
He dies on an empty day, between one festival and another. His son is in the library, and his daughter is in the yard. His grandson is playing in the street. He's sitting in the sun, folding a crane, and the fox is standing in front of him, quick and sly and more beautiful than before. Time spins in strange ways.
"Such a beauty," he says, because her eyes are bigger, blacker, than others'. She smiles for him, licks his cheek, and her nails dig into his shoulder.
"You dreamt too much," she says, and she lowers him to the wood of the porch, smoothing out his skin. She sits beside him, her kimono falling over the edge, her hair spilling over his chest. "I've been waiting."
"Our grandson," he says, tries to explain. She laughs at him like windchimes, and he knows, he thinks he knows, that she'll never understand, because she's different. She's young, beautiful, and she'll be so still when Shizuka's grandsons are grown, and their grandsons are grown. Her spin is slower than theirs, a graceful fall of silk and hair while theirs is a tumble. She's a fox, and he's a man, and his grandson is more broken.
"I tried," he turns his face against the wood, tries to see the street past the gates, "to help him." Her laughter is brighter, and when he touches her hair, she turns her face, lies her tongue against his wrist.
"You can't change it," she tells him. "It was supposed to be this way. You shouldn't have dreamt so long. I wasn't meant to wait."
He wants to ask why, but it's an empty day, and old men are empty men, left to dream in the sunshine, paper cranes half-folded around them. Existence is unfolding around him, a step and a pause and stand upright, draw your bow to yourself. He can hear his grandson laughing, and his daughter singing in the yard, with eyes like her mother's. Eyes like the fox's. His grandson is more broken.
"It," the fox murmurs, and she's cradling his face, kissing him with feral mouth, "is hitsuzen."
Written for overlimits:
Jade/Nephry - overworked
Pre-game, small spoilers for Jade's past. It-- sorta became more Jade->Nebilim than Jade/Nephry. Oops. D:
The Replica Song
Another replica died during the night, spitting blood from its mouth. He turns it over with the edge of a scalpel, lies the edge of the blade against the throat, then down the stomach. The rat's body splits open smoothly, and he holds back skin with the dull edge of the scalpel, pulls the cut further open with a thumb and forefinger. The organs slip, feel slimy through his gloves, and he finds the heart.
It's still intact. It should be beating. A touch of the scalpel has the heart cut free, and he lifts it out, smaller than his thumbnail. He holds it cupped in his hand, and when he opens it wide, the valves are clear, and what blood was left in it is clean, a rich red that pearls on his hand.
It should be beating.
He'll try again tomorrow.
x
The next time, both the replica and the original die, blood in the replica's mouth and whiskers, a rattle and sigh from the original. Their hearts aren't broken, nor are their stomachs, their lungs, their liver and brain and intestines. Kidneys, gallbladders, everything is clean. He opens them all, takes notes and draws sketches, quick slashes of ink on the paper. There's no reason for a rattle and blood in whiskers, and he wonders if it'd be the same with humans. If Professor Nebilim will have blood on her mouth.
There's something missing, something he can't think of, on the haze of his mind, and he doesn't know what it is, what could be missing that leads to a rattle of blood. He turns over the bodies, cuts them open with tiny movements, bodies the length of his hand, and deaths the size of his thumb. He empties the rats, then fills them back up, and wonders why they die.
"You should stop," Nephry says, and she lays her hands on his shoulders, rests her chin on the top of his head. He would reach and touch her, pat the back of her hands, but his gloves are slick and wet. He hums instead, flips the scalpel in his hand, and pushes a liver, looks for something he can't find.
"There's something missing," he says, and Nephry's hands are loose. He wonders if she'll step back, if she'll step closer. He wants to touch her hand, but she hates it when he touches her with bloody gloves. She hates it when he touches her.
The hearts should be beating.
"What is it?" she asks, and he frowns, leans closer, trying to find something in the way the blood is smeared across the tray. Words, maybe, or a picture. Some kind of hint of what he's missing, what Professor Nebilim tried to teach him. Tries to teach him.
"They should be beating," he says, and he cuts open a heart, shows it to her. Her face is pale, but she looks at the valves, at the clean blood, watches him smear it between thumb and finger. When he catches her wrist, she shudders, but she doesn't step away. She doesn't step closer.
"Don't work too hard." She kisses the top of his head, like their mother used to, and then she walks away swiftly, sensible heels on a sensible floor, where the blood is easy to wipe up. Where the ashes don't stay for long. He wonders why her heart was beating so hard, blood heavy in her wrist.
x
The original is lying in the bottom of the cage, listless and faint-breathed, but the replica's still alive. Three days, the longest so far. It's throwing itself at the cage, baring its teeth at him, but it's alive. Its heart, lungs, brain are all beating, quick and strong, and he reaches in the cage, grabs the base of its tail. It twists as he pulls it out of the cage, trying to bite him, and he jostles it.
He pins the rat to the tray, thumb and forefinger pressing at the base of the neck, and the rat's limbs scrabble at the smooth metal, nails scrittering. He flips his scalpel with his other hand, lies the edge against the side of the rat, and when the rat lies still, chest heaving for breath, he cuts. It's smooth, clean, deep, and the thrashing smears blood, like words spelled out in the dregs of tea.
It's easy to flip the rat over, its jaws weak and flimsy when it tries to bite him, and he presses his thumb inside, finds the heart, pitter-patter-fast like Nephry's footsteps, sensible shoes on sensible floors when she runs away, face pale and eyes wet. He wonders if Professor Nebilim will wear sensible shoes again, if her mouth will be bloody.
The heart's beating against the underside of his thumb, faster than his heart, and he presses his other thumb against the rat's head, the underside of its jaw, turning it up. He can see the throat move, shallow breathing, and he wonders if Professor Nebilim will be able talk. If her lungs will be clean, her brain and kidney and liver. Her heart.
The heart's not beating.
He wonders what he's missing.
Third:
Lexi's baby shower was today. And-- I found out why she had to go the hospital last week. The baby broke some of Lexi's ribs. As in, hairline fractures. Down her right side. as;fkj OW. And she's on Lortab for all the pain. Like, the kidney, which got horribly squashed, and her fractured ribs. asd;fkjl The sooner the baby's born, the better. Come on, baby. We're just waiting for you~ ♥