And, the last.
Third Run: Ivalice, AUs and FFT.
AU: Collar -- Ashe and Vossler ala. Seams
He remembers this hall. He has patrolled this hall. He tells her as much, and she turns back and smiles, guarded even though her mourning veil shields everything. “Come,” she says, and opens the door inward. When he takes the knob from her, holds it in her stead, his gauntlets rattle against her rings.
They’d occupied him throughout the memorial-they still do, though she is rapt on the room, on the moonlight and the luminescence of the mansion’s wings. He’s grown used to that light by now, serving her Uncle-her late Uncle, he reminds himself-as he does-did-but he’s never dared enter this room, never passed it while the maids were draping it, never asked after its contents when he saw them clutched in the hands of the Marquis’ grandchildren. So he still stares at Ashe’s rings, more than half but less than a dozen, the right hand laden with her father’s and her own and Dalmasca’s, the left collared with husbands. He almost misses the hitch in her breath as she learns-which he shortly does as well-that the room is barren.
She drifts through it, skirts trailing until they are part of the long shadows. The moonlight is enough, and jarring enough, and as before he was rapt on her hands now he is rapt on her. And fate save him for thinking again, again, how dare he, that grief makes her lovelier.
He reaches out and turns the lights on. The gesture is sudden, but the sconces act slow, weary, infirm. She doesn’t expect them, and glances back at him, the veil achingly thin as the shadows retreat from it. She had not been crying. She is too proud to.
“Close the door, Vossler.”
He backs toward it first-when had he advanced? Why does it worry him that he advanced?-and even before he reaches back for it, he knows. “Your Majesty, no-”
But the she is against him - the door slammed shut behind him, enough to wake the dead - ringed fingers in his hair and on his collar and her lips crushing his own-
And damned if it isn’t everything he wants.
He grabs onto whatever part of her he can and shoves her off, but she’s still holding him and he lurches against her, yanked down to her mouth, staggering, listless, writhing, drunk, “Ashe-” he heaves and it hadn’t meant to sound like that, hadn’t meant to be repeated, “Ashe, Ashe-”
And the hand on the back of his neck spears him downward, tangles in his hair and the buckles of his vest, and this is years culminating, the violent dreams of the desert. He must hold onto something, finds her, gathers her, devastates the space between them. Her beads scrape on his studding, her shoulders an onslaught to his chest, her bare back warming his gauntlets and he must be rid of them, must be-
“Ashe,” he chokes into her, “Your Majesty. No.”
The bed. That is the canopy of it, on his cheek. That is her shadow on its covers. That is her thigh between his legs, black cloth wrinkling and he will not lean against it.
Anything. Anything but her eyes.
“You would deny me this,” she breathes, hoarse from his kiss, and why is he letting himself be proud of that, hoarse from his kiss-
“I would,” he says too quickly. He could lecture her - in her Uncle’s house, in the garb she wears to mourn him, with her husband and heir also under this roof, with the realm to consider, with herself to consider-
He does not. She is seeking his eyes. She lost her trust for him long ago, he thought-
-and now I have lost it again.
He is prominent against her thigh, damn the thin armor of the Sanikah, and still she holds his neck, his collar, still she wants his eyes. “Tell me truly,” she whispers, firm and steady as a crossbow-and then. “I…I am asking this of you. Vossler. Please.”
When last he looked her in the eyes at all, she had nearly killed him.
-
AU: For his father -- Kain Highwind in Ivalice
“He won’t come.”
“Your Majesty-”
“Regardless, Captain Highwind, you should not plan our defense around his coming. And he will not, if he knows what is best. For him. For his bride. For both our lands.”
Kain wished for the protection of his helm more now than ever. He could not hide the wrinkle of his brow, the wincing in his lips as he acquiesced to the king. “My liege. Your son-”
“If he truly knows my heart, he will live,” the king interrupted, urgent-Kain dared think impetuous-his hands tented on the lit table of strategy. The forces were arrayed too sparsely, Kain knew, he didn’t have to be years at war to see that. “Must I remind you of your inexperience?”
“I know that I am only exalted out of need, and not merit, my liege,” Kain agreed. “But we must defend you, and defend the quarantine. Prince Rasler knows this. And he will come with Dalmasca.”
“Then he is a fool.”
“And your son,” Kain said before he could stop himself.
“And a poor son,” said the King, “to throw his life away for his father.”
Kain seethed privately. That, he knew how to conceal.
-
AU: Direction -- In which Basch went west and Noah went south
Almost forgetting that he still held a sword with it, Noah wrapped his free arm around his brother’s neck and pulled him close, and forced an insistent, blood-caked kiss to Basch’s forehead. Basch sighed and closed his eyes, resigned, and returned his twin’s hold, his breath sullen and leaden on Noah’s neck.
“One year,” Noah asserted, lips right against his brother’s skin.
“The Colonnade at Nabudis,” Basch confirmed, as if the countersign to a password, clasping Noah’s hand tightly in his own.
A pair of Archadian crafts wheeled overhead, their klaxons and searchlights burning past the twins’ weary eyelids. The young men pried themselves apart with a jolt and darted off in opposite directions, only looking back once, a hundred strides already between them.
.
“And you are?”
“Basch,” he told them from the start. “Basch fon Ronsenburg.”
To a man, they had heard of the last, at least. Some repeated it, the twins; others stared. Basch stood uneasily and looked only their leader in the eye.
“Your brother?” the man asked Bach directly, the gaps in his teeth given weight by the dwindling hearth.
“We are hunted,” Basch admitted. “He has gone south, to do the same as I do here.”
“Which is?”
“As you do here. You do not bend to Archadia; nor shall I, and nor shall my brother.”
“You will not find men here to do as you have done,” the leader told him plain, retreating into the dark planks of the walls. “We’re not soldiers. We’re not heroes.”
“We are a race of heroes,” Basch said.
“I’m with him,” a voice projected through the crowd-Estlandiser, like Basch, in this crowd of Ostern, and something near and nostalgic within it all. Basch held down his back teeth and waited for the man to rise from his bench, from his ale-and knew him on sight.
“Robin.”
He smiled. “Up for a game of robber-baron, Basch?”
Basch could not help but smile. “This time, only Archadians hang.”
.
In the week and a half before he met King Heios Nabradia, Noah was meticulous. He knew by then the number of the Guard, their routes, their watches, their pay, what takes no few were on; who ruled the underworld, who led which Clans, who held the hands of Ministers behind their backs and, in some cases, how; the names of the King’s wife and mistresses, his heir and no few children out of wedlock, and his brothers who had died not long ago. Noah was frugal with what little remained him, letting time cast his face to many ages, many countenances, selling his clothing as each day passed. And so Noah was finally given audience, as himself and in what remained of his Landiser armor, with the sword his father gave him at his side.
“Scarce a month has passed, since this stagnation,” the King began, hale and implacable on his white throne, “yet still the hunted heroes of Landis are bold enough to chance an audience with a King.”
“Why hold my name and country in reserve, when they are the whips that drive me?” Noah said clearly, glancing at the row of Ministers though his head was bowed. “Surely you will investigate this claim, and had I spoken false, my case would break.”
Nabradia laughed, fruit-fat and laden. “Then make it now, though I tell you from the start We are not equipped for war.”
Noah smiled, deadly and proud, and elucidated to the King and his council precisely how equipped Nabradia was.
.
When the brothers reconvened, Basch muscled and wild, Noah crisp and beringed, only the fervor of their embrace betrayed their fraternity.
-
Big Brother -- Three Beoulves
“The little blighter,” Zalbag mutters, and it’s almost endearing.
“Hush.” Dycedarg rolls his eyes, sticks out his toe and nudges the boy, curled up in the frame of the door like a nursing kit. “Ramza. Ramza.”
Whimpering, the boy stirs, his golden curls grating on the tassels of the rug.
“Get up,” Dycedarg goes on, with the same firm restraint. “Someone will trip over you if you stay here.”
“But I don’t like the new room,” Ramza whinges. “It’s too big, and the-and the bed’s too high and-”
“C’mon,” Zalbag interrupts, scooping the toddler into his arms. “Didn’t you think the nursery was for little boys?”
“But I am little!”
“Yes, but you won’t always be.” Dycedarg edges back when Zalbag shifts Ramza around, swings the boy gently until he can look him in his scrunched-up eyes. “Alma’s the little one now. You’re big brother to her. So you have to act it.”
“And that means sleeping in your own room,” Dycedarg finishes. “Understand?”
Ramza still whimpers, but he nods, slow and sleepy.
Dycedarg listens through the nursery door to make sure their conversation hasn’t woken anyone, then gestures to Zalbag with a crick of his head. They turn back the way they came, Zalbag holding Ramza as he drifts back to sleep.
-
----
And, because it wouldn't fit,
Everything -- The aftermath of Vossler's fight with Ashe's son, and also, one of them is dead.
Vossler eyes the trail of Reks’ blood. It almost simmers on the moss, the snowflies darting into it, hungry, curious. Reks is still leaning on the jamb of the gate, his back to the forest at last, but not yet staring at the town-city, nearly. The man’s head is striving not to hang. The insects weigh on his shoulders, his armor, the gash in his thigh. He does not mend it. Perhaps he does not know how. But he leans on it, and walks, and will obey. Will leave.
“Have you not yet had enough?” Ashe spits at Vossler, between him and the living man, where the snowflies leave the most space. She is old, atrocious and old, the black smoke of her eyes curling around her hawkish nose, the dark mass of her abdomen cradling the specters of miscarriage. But if Vossler breathed still, he would stop now, for the sight of her.
Before he can protest, still she rails, still she glowers. “You debase yourself, you blacken the realm, you mock my son-”
“Ashe-”
“-you dare address me-”
“It is not mockery,” he growls, and this is enough, has been enough for years. Nightmare’s impression hangs slack in his hand-and-half, the insects writhing around it. “Ashe,” he says again, demanding, “time was you would not have me call you anything else.”
The wisp-toes of her phantom shoes drag over the congregating bugs, moss, filth. “It is a privilege, and you lost it.”
“You patronize me.”
“It is my right.”
“It suits you little.”
She goes for his neck, and her hands pass through it, past the collar that bound them, past his absence of skin. Against him, or though him, she wails, staggering on the air. He is still.
“Why?” she seethes, behind him, within him. “In the name of those dead before us, why?”
“For you,” he tells her, and the world is dark. “Everything.”
-
---
PHEW!