Fic: Dagger of the Moon, Chapter Three and Coda (Final Fantasy 4, Rosa/Kain, worksafe)
Dagger of the Moon
Chapter Three: and hear you a song that enchants the stone
and
coda
After Cecil's death, Queen Rosa of Baron reaches out to an old friend. But Kain cannot untangle his present from his past, or either from his future.
Final Fantasy 4. Rosa/Kain, Rosa/Cecil. 2500 words this chapter; 4500 words total.
Spoilers. Warning for character death. Worksafe. Complete.
Chapter One: the blistered palm holding its tune
Chapter Two: sing the heart of water
Kain loves his dinners with Rosa, and he hates them. She asks his opinion and listens to it, and he talks to her freely when she does so. But still he aches, and he does not want to share that ache with her, does not want to infect her with it.
He will hurt her. And he will betray the memory of his friend.
But still she pushes, and he is afraid becuase someday he will give in (he has never been able to tell her no), and then he will hurt her again and it will be his fault. She is safer with the memory of Cecil, who was good, than with the reality of himself.
" . . . and then I believe it would be time well spent to take Edward to the harvest festival. He would appreciate it," he finishes, and then applies himself to his roast lamb.
"You don't need to say that with such disdain," Rosa says, laughing. "Edward may not be much of a fighter, but he's a good king. And Damcyan is one of our staunchest allies." She tips her head. "Besides, don't you enjoy harvest festivals, even a little?"
"Frivolous," Kain says, spearing a potato with his fork.
"Perhaps I should make you come with me, just for that," Rosa says. And the lightness in her tone, the way she smiles at him, made his heart stumble and then begin to race.
As calmly as he can, he says, "I don't know what I would even do at a harvest festival."
"Say nice things about oversized vegetables. Look appropriately noble and approving. Eat too much. Drink beer." She smiles. "Dance with me."
His throat freezes.
"I know you can dance," Rosa continues. "All men of good birth learn. I've seen you. And you, at least, wouldn't step on my toes."
"Rosa," he says, his voice strangled.
"I would like very much not to go alone," Rosa says. Her voice is soft as poppy petals, and just as dangerous.
"Rosa, I can't." He can feel himself shutting down, shutting off, the only way he knows how to defend himself. Walls upon walls. "You know that I can't."
"I know that you think you can't." She hesitates, and then says, more softly, "Is it that you don't want to? Because if it is, I will leave you in peace."
The simplest thing would be to say: yes, that's exactly it, I don't want to. I don't feel for you that way.
But it is a lie so great it cannot pass from his mind to his mouth, and he put his fork down mutely.
There is a long, silent moment, and he looks at Rosa and she looks at him, and he knew his eyes are speaking things he should not allow but he cannot not look away. Cannot.
"Cecil loved you," Rosa says, softly. "He was not angry. He only missed you. As I missed you. And miss you."
Kain says nothing.
"As I loved you," Rosa continued, holding his gaze. "As I love you."
He swallows. "I have always loved you, Rosa," he says. "You know that." His voice falls like stones dropped in a pond, and he watched her to see the ripples. "But Cecil . . . I . . . "
"Cecil wanted you to be happy. He wanted me to be happy." And then, with a hint almost of exasperation, "Kain, we talked about this, him and I."
" . . . you talked about what you would do if he . . . ?"
"He was not as much a fool as perhaps some would believe. We both knew that he could be a poor and passive king and live safe within Baron's walls, or he could be a good and active king and very likely die young." She looks away, and he sees the echo of sorrow, sees how much she has missed Cecil and in that moment sees that some part of her will always grieve, too. But what she says is, "He told me to live and to be happy, and that a good ruler needs someone to support them and that I should seek that. And he loved you, and he trusted you."
"More fool him," Kain says, bitter, bitter, poison purging from his tongue.
"No," Rosa said and her voice turns sharp. She rises and come to stand by his chair, and he looks up at her, helpless, helpless, helpless and so in love with her. "Cecil was not a fool for trusting you, or a fool for loving you. And neither am I. And I cannot make you see that, or force you to heal yourself, but I will not let you turn your tongue to a knife to cut Cecil or me because you cut yourself worse with every word."
Kain says nothing.
"I cannot make you see anything," Rosa says. "But I can ask you to look." And she bends and kisses his forehead, chastely, but he can smell nightflowers on her and her presence is stronger than any wine. For a fleeting second she rests her forehead against his temple. "And if you will not be gentle with yourself, then I will be gentle with you, because you are my friend and my right arm and I love you." She straightens, then, and says, "Good night, Kain Highwind," and then she is gone, and he is alone with the candles burning down on the table.
After dinner Rosa goes out into her private courtyard-garden. It is her only true indulgence as queen: to her, the castle belongs to Baron, and she will not hoard gold and jewels when children go hungry in the village. But the garden was Cecil's gift to her and it is hers; even Cecil did not have a key to it, though often she invited him to join her.
(Among her favorite memories: the times they made love on the soft moss, with the air full of the smell of flowers and soft birdsong.)
She sheds her heavily-embroidered surcote and her shoes, and then her crown, and leaves them on the low wall by the door. It takes only a touch of magic to light the lanterns, a soft glow that does not drown out the stars overhead. She walks barefoot and picks and plaits flowers, and considers what she has done.
She frightened Kain, she knows. In his eyes, she saw guilt and fear and grief, and she was helpless. She did not know how to ease them for him, could not find the words to tell him that she had never blamed him, that Cecil had never blamed him.
She takes down her hair and binds it again with the flowers, as she did when she was not much more than a child. It is a comfort, to walk barefoot and crowned in flowers, without the weight of the kingdom, with only the night as her companion.
Only the night, and . . . .
From the corner of her eye she sees movement, and when she looks up she remembers, ruefully, that Kain can leap many yards straight upward from a standing start, and that Kain always took comfort from walking on rooftops alone just as she took comfort from walking in gardens. And yes, there he is, standing on the peaked roof with his long hair blown out sideways from him in the wind like a turret-banner.
"I'm sorry," he says, and though his voice is not loud it carries, "for intruding."
"Don't," she says, and though there has been no one in this garden but herself and Cecil till now, she says, "Come down."
He leaps lightly down, then stands still as a threatened animal. "You are beautiful," he says, and she realizes that he sees her now in a shift and flowers and barefoot, not a queen but a woman.
"I won't hurt you," she says, and comes close to him. "I would never hurt you, Kain."
"That's what I'm afraid of," he says, wry and rueful.
"You'll have to find someone else to punish you, if that's what you want," Rosa says, but his tone means that she can make a joke of it. "That's not what I'd like to do with you."
He looks surprised, but he does not retreat. Perhaps this is what she needed to do, to remind him that though she was Cecil's Queen she is a woman of her own, that he can love her as herself instead of loving her in the tangled morass of his own guilt. But he rallies and says, "Not even if I ask you very nicely?"
"Perhaps then," she says, and he laughs and so does she.
This time when she touches his cheek he bends, finally, to kiss her.
His arm tightens around her waist and hers slide around his neck; they fit together perfectly and as he deepens the embrace she thinks, Yes.
Kain wakes slowly to unexpected warmth. For the first time in a great while, no part of him is cold, not even the hollow of his chest. He can hear birdsong and smell the breath of spring through the window.
But when he shifts he realizes where the warmth and comfort have come from. Rosa lies next to him, her head against his shoulder, the subtle softness of her curves pressed along his side, her hand on his chest. Her loose hair spills out over the bed and mingles with his, a deep and lustrous gold against his own straw-pale yellow.
He very nearly panics. But Rosa stirs and raises her head and smiles at him, her eyes summer-sky blue and so calm that they bring him to calmness despite himself, his pounding heart finding a slower rhythm with hers.
"Good morning," she says.
"Good morning," he replies, and he smiles and it feels as though something is cracking. Though he shed his armor and dedicated it and himself to Cecil's memory, it seems he was carrying another set of armor that only now he can remove.
Her smile widens and she kisses him, and he holds her to him and returns it, with all that has been in his heart for her since they were children.
The rise together, they bathe, they dress, and in the daylight Kain is even more beautiful than he was by darkness the night before. He may think of himself as a creature of the night but the sun loves him, turns his skin to bronze and his hair to the color of a harvest moon. The lean lines of his muscles stand out as he draws the tunic down over his head, and she would be sad to see them covered save that it means she will be able to undress him again tonight and discover them all anew.
The thought thrills her, the slow-growing wildrose in her heart now full in bloom and breathing its heady perfume into her life.
They part and go their separate ways with a kiss that still has some hesitance to it but that is becoming something new. When she meets with her advisors, she is humming, and though they must know what happened no one does anything but smile back at her.
When she is done, she follows a hunch and finds Kain standing again at Cecil's grave, at the armor he had piled at the foot of the tomb. She gives him his space, and wonders what he is thinking. Cecil could speak to those beyond the veil, could ask for and receive absolution from them who numbered among the dead. But Cecil was the last son of the moon, and those who are fully human must seek the same thing within their own hearts.
But when Kain finally turns, he is smiling, just a little. He pauses to pick up his helmet and turn it over in his hands. "I think it may be time to reinstate the Dragoons," he says. "The Red Wings cannot be everything for Baron's defense."
"I was hoping you would decide that," Rosa says.
coda
"One thing I should make clear, my heart," Kain says, six months after that first night.
"Yes?" Rosa looks up from the breakfast table, to Kain where he stands buckling on his distinctive soft-palmed gauntlets. His new squadron of dragoons was proving both small and green, but Kain was himself proving to be an excellent teacher.
"I will not be king. I would be a terrible king, you are an excellent queen, and anyway I do not want the job. I will do anything you ask, except that."
She rises, her dressing-gown whispering in the breeze from the open tower window, and comes to help him buckle the second gauntlet. "I believe I can live with that," she says. "Would you consent to be consort, then?"
He takes her hand in both of his, her fingers small and delicate against the leather and blued steel of his armor. He lifts it, kisses her wrist where the blood pulses beneath the skin, and says, "Yes."
Fin.
Posted on LJ and DW, reply here or there. Currently there are
comments at DW.
Chapter Three: and hear you a song that enchants the stone
and
coda
After Cecil's death, Queen Rosa of Baron reaches out to an old friend. But Kain cannot untangle his present from his past, or either from his future.
Final Fantasy 4. Rosa/Kain, Rosa/Cecil. 2500 words this chapter; 4500 words total.
Spoilers. Warning for character death. Worksafe. Complete.
Chapter One: the blistered palm holding its tune
Chapter Two: sing the heart of water
Kain loves his dinners with Rosa, and he hates them. She asks his opinion and listens to it, and he talks to her freely when she does so. But still he aches, and he does not want to share that ache with her, does not want to infect her with it.
He will hurt her. And he will betray the memory of his friend.
But still she pushes, and he is afraid becuase someday he will give in (he has never been able to tell her no), and then he will hurt her again and it will be his fault. She is safer with the memory of Cecil, who was good, than with the reality of himself.
" . . . and then I believe it would be time well spent to take Edward to the harvest festival. He would appreciate it," he finishes, and then applies himself to his roast lamb.
"You don't need to say that with such disdain," Rosa says, laughing. "Edward may not be much of a fighter, but he's a good king. And Damcyan is one of our staunchest allies." She tips her head. "Besides, don't you enjoy harvest festivals, even a little?"
"Frivolous," Kain says, spearing a potato with his fork.
"Perhaps I should make you come with me, just for that," Rosa says. And the lightness in her tone, the way she smiles at him, made his heart stumble and then begin to race.
As calmly as he can, he says, "I don't know what I would even do at a harvest festival."
"Say nice things about oversized vegetables. Look appropriately noble and approving. Eat too much. Drink beer." She smiles. "Dance with me."
His throat freezes.
"I know you can dance," Rosa continues. "All men of good birth learn. I've seen you. And you, at least, wouldn't step on my toes."
"Rosa," he says, his voice strangled.
"I would like very much not to go alone," Rosa says. Her voice is soft as poppy petals, and just as dangerous.
"Rosa, I can't." He can feel himself shutting down, shutting off, the only way he knows how to defend himself. Walls upon walls. "You know that I can't."
"I know that you think you can't." She hesitates, and then says, more softly, "Is it that you don't want to? Because if it is, I will leave you in peace."
The simplest thing would be to say: yes, that's exactly it, I don't want to. I don't feel for you that way.
But it is a lie so great it cannot pass from his mind to his mouth, and he put his fork down mutely.
There is a long, silent moment, and he looks at Rosa and she looks at him, and he knew his eyes are speaking things he should not allow but he cannot not look away. Cannot.
"Cecil loved you," Rosa says, softly. "He was not angry. He only missed you. As I missed you. And miss you."
Kain says nothing.
"As I loved you," Rosa continued, holding his gaze. "As I love you."
He swallows. "I have always loved you, Rosa," he says. "You know that." His voice falls like stones dropped in a pond, and he watched her to see the ripples. "But Cecil . . . I . . . "
"Cecil wanted you to be happy. He wanted me to be happy." And then, with a hint almost of exasperation, "Kain, we talked about this, him and I."
" . . . you talked about what you would do if he . . . ?"
"He was not as much a fool as perhaps some would believe. We both knew that he could be a poor and passive king and live safe within Baron's walls, or he could be a good and active king and very likely die young." She looks away, and he sees the echo of sorrow, sees how much she has missed Cecil and in that moment sees that some part of her will always grieve, too. But what she says is, "He told me to live and to be happy, and that a good ruler needs someone to support them and that I should seek that. And he loved you, and he trusted you."
"More fool him," Kain says, bitter, bitter, poison purging from his tongue.
"No," Rosa said and her voice turns sharp. She rises and come to stand by his chair, and he looks up at her, helpless, helpless, helpless and so in love with her. "Cecil was not a fool for trusting you, or a fool for loving you. And neither am I. And I cannot make you see that, or force you to heal yourself, but I will not let you turn your tongue to a knife to cut Cecil or me because you cut yourself worse with every word."
Kain says nothing.
"I cannot make you see anything," Rosa says. "But I can ask you to look." And she bends and kisses his forehead, chastely, but he can smell nightflowers on her and her presence is stronger than any wine. For a fleeting second she rests her forehead against his temple. "And if you will not be gentle with yourself, then I will be gentle with you, because you are my friend and my right arm and I love you." She straightens, then, and says, "Good night, Kain Highwind," and then she is gone, and he is alone with the candles burning down on the table.
After dinner Rosa goes out into her private courtyard-garden. It is her only true indulgence as queen: to her, the castle belongs to Baron, and she will not hoard gold and jewels when children go hungry in the village. But the garden was Cecil's gift to her and it is hers; even Cecil did not have a key to it, though often she invited him to join her.
(Among her favorite memories: the times they made love on the soft moss, with the air full of the smell of flowers and soft birdsong.)
She sheds her heavily-embroidered surcote and her shoes, and then her crown, and leaves them on the low wall by the door. It takes only a touch of magic to light the lanterns, a soft glow that does not drown out the stars overhead. She walks barefoot and picks and plaits flowers, and considers what she has done.
She frightened Kain, she knows. In his eyes, she saw guilt and fear and grief, and she was helpless. She did not know how to ease them for him, could not find the words to tell him that she had never blamed him, that Cecil had never blamed him.
She takes down her hair and binds it again with the flowers, as she did when she was not much more than a child. It is a comfort, to walk barefoot and crowned in flowers, without the weight of the kingdom, with only the night as her companion.
Only the night, and . . . .
From the corner of her eye she sees movement, and when she looks up she remembers, ruefully, that Kain can leap many yards straight upward from a standing start, and that Kain always took comfort from walking on rooftops alone just as she took comfort from walking in gardens. And yes, there he is, standing on the peaked roof with his long hair blown out sideways from him in the wind like a turret-banner.
"I'm sorry," he says, and though his voice is not loud it carries, "for intruding."
"Don't," she says, and though there has been no one in this garden but herself and Cecil till now, she says, "Come down."
He leaps lightly down, then stands still as a threatened animal. "You are beautiful," he says, and she realizes that he sees her now in a shift and flowers and barefoot, not a queen but a woman.
"I won't hurt you," she says, and comes close to him. "I would never hurt you, Kain."
"That's what I'm afraid of," he says, wry and rueful.
"You'll have to find someone else to punish you, if that's what you want," Rosa says, but his tone means that she can make a joke of it. "That's not what I'd like to do with you."
He looks surprised, but he does not retreat. Perhaps this is what she needed to do, to remind him that though she was Cecil's Queen she is a woman of her own, that he can love her as herself instead of loving her in the tangled morass of his own guilt. But he rallies and says, "Not even if I ask you very nicely?"
"Perhaps then," she says, and he laughs and so does she.
This time when she touches his cheek he bends, finally, to kiss her.
His arm tightens around her waist and hers slide around his neck; they fit together perfectly and as he deepens the embrace she thinks, Yes.
Kain wakes slowly to unexpected warmth. For the first time in a great while, no part of him is cold, not even the hollow of his chest. He can hear birdsong and smell the breath of spring through the window.
But when he shifts he realizes where the warmth and comfort have come from. Rosa lies next to him, her head against his shoulder, the subtle softness of her curves pressed along his side, her hand on his chest. Her loose hair spills out over the bed and mingles with his, a deep and lustrous gold against his own straw-pale yellow.
He very nearly panics. But Rosa stirs and raises her head and smiles at him, her eyes summer-sky blue and so calm that they bring him to calmness despite himself, his pounding heart finding a slower rhythm with hers.
"Good morning," she says.
"Good morning," he replies, and he smiles and it feels as though something is cracking. Though he shed his armor and dedicated it and himself to Cecil's memory, it seems he was carrying another set of armor that only now he can remove.
Her smile widens and she kisses him, and he holds her to him and returns it, with all that has been in his heart for her since they were children.
The rise together, they bathe, they dress, and in the daylight Kain is even more beautiful than he was by darkness the night before. He may think of himself as a creature of the night but the sun loves him, turns his skin to bronze and his hair to the color of a harvest moon. The lean lines of his muscles stand out as he draws the tunic down over his head, and she would be sad to see them covered save that it means she will be able to undress him again tonight and discover them all anew.
The thought thrills her, the slow-growing wildrose in her heart now full in bloom and breathing its heady perfume into her life.
They part and go their separate ways with a kiss that still has some hesitance to it but that is becoming something new. When she meets with her advisors, she is humming, and though they must know what happened no one does anything but smile back at her.
When she is done, she follows a hunch and finds Kain standing again at Cecil's grave, at the armor he had piled at the foot of the tomb. She gives him his space, and wonders what he is thinking. Cecil could speak to those beyond the veil, could ask for and receive absolution from them who numbered among the dead. But Cecil was the last son of the moon, and those who are fully human must seek the same thing within their own hearts.
But when Kain finally turns, he is smiling, just a little. He pauses to pick up his helmet and turn it over in his hands. "I think it may be time to reinstate the Dragoons," he says. "The Red Wings cannot be everything for Baron's defense."
"I was hoping you would decide that," Rosa says.
coda
"One thing I should make clear, my heart," Kain says, six months after that first night.
"Yes?" Rosa looks up from the breakfast table, to Kain where he stands buckling on his distinctive soft-palmed gauntlets. His new squadron of dragoons was proving both small and green, but Kain was himself proving to be an excellent teacher.
"I will not be king. I would be a terrible king, you are an excellent queen, and anyway I do not want the job. I will do anything you ask, except that."
She rises, her dressing-gown whispering in the breeze from the open tower window, and comes to help him buckle the second gauntlet. "I believe I can live with that," she says. "Would you consent to be consort, then?"
He takes her hand in both of his, her fingers small and delicate against the leather and blued steel of his armor. He lifts it, kisses her wrist where the blood pulses beneath the skin, and says, "Yes."
Fin.
Posted on LJ and DW, reply here or there. Currently there are
comments at DW.