FFXII Fic: In the Hour Before Us, Chapter 2 (Larsa/Penelo)
When life lets you down a bit, it’s always nice to have fanfic to retreat to. While this possibly means I’m co-dependent on fandom, at least it keeps me productive. ^_^
In any case, this particular chapter is dedicated to Serindrana, because she very kindly reminded me of the existence of this series, and to Zamnandi, because she was the very person to ever review the first chapter. With reviewers as good as you two sweethearts, who needs betas? ;) (But more on that point later!)
And as always, reviews, comments and constructive criticism are always adored-- especially for this series! I freely admit to this being the first long-running narrative I’ve ever tried penning and any help is greatly appreciated.
Title: In The Hour Before Us, Chapter 2
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: In The Hour Before Us
Pairings: Larsa/Penelo
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Boy meets girl. Boy rescues girl. Boy then technically kidnaps girl. When Penelo first meets Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, she has no idea what's in store for her...
Note: AU, Older!Larsa.
***
It was hard not to be appalled by Larsa's plan when he first explained it, no matter how sweetly or earnestly he went about doing so. And the terrible thing was that Larsa really was very sweet and earnest and wide-eyed in an almost charming way as he went about systematically breaking Penelo’s brains with his carefully placed words. All in all, after about a half an hour’s worth of explanations, all Penelo could do was sit in a state of mild shock (this seemed to be turning into her default emotion more and more as life piled on its surprises) and ask him to go over all of it again.
"Can you," Penelo said slowly, clearly, so the royal madman before her could understand, "please summarize what you want me to do? In smaller and more colorful words? So my brain doesn‘t hurt this time?"
At least Larsa was game (or desperate) enough to give it a try. "It's all very simple, Penelo. All I need you do is come with me to Archades, pretend to be my… special female friend while we travel together for a while, train me to pass as an ordinary Rabanastran citizen, kidnap me back to your city and help me figure out the truth of a few… interesting allegations made about the politics within it. It really shouldn’t take more than a few months-- a year at most-- of your time and I shall make sure that you’re handsomely compensated for your efforts afterwards.”
Unfortunately, it didn't make any more sense the second time around. Either she had lost her mind and this was just a bad fever dream that came from unwisely ingesting Vaan’s experiments in Ordalian cooking (which tended to be heavy on potential hallucinogens) or all the inbreeding that nobility did as a matter of course was finally manifesting itself with a vengeance right in front of her appalled eyes.
She didn’t know what was a worse possibility and really just wanted to retire discreetly to bed with a wet washcloth over her forehead right now.
And yet, it was surprisingly hard to look into Larsa's earnest face and turn him down. But it was equally difficult not to be shocked at the idea of parading around one of the grandest courts of Ivalice while pretending to be... what it was that he wanted her to pretend to be… and kidnapping one of its blue-blooded notables right afterwards. So in the end, Penelo had to go with her first impulse.
"Absolutely not," Penelo said, firmly and carefully, though she ended up wanting to immediately comfort a stricken Larsa afterwards. Maybe the real power of the Archadian empire lay not so much in their magic or might but in the way the ruling house had of guilt-tripping enemies into compliance.
It would go a long way towards soothing wounded her Dalmascan pride about how quickly her empire had folded so quickly against it, anyhow.
"I'm really sorry," she tried again in the midst of some seriously damaging puppy eyes, "but when I used to dream of a man bringing me home as a little girl, this wasn't exactly what came to mind. Even putting aside all the ways this could go wrong-- and there are so many ways this could go wrong-- what makes you think I would even be believable as a-- well-- a-- you know what you want me to be! I mean, I know I'm not ugly enough to go around with a paper bag on my head, but I'm still not really, you know..."
Beautiful, that was what she meant. She wasn't exactly beautiful. She'd be cat-called by enough construction workers on her way to and from her dancing job at the Muthru Bazaar (really, where was the Archadian empire hiring these perverts?) to know she wasn't offensive looking. But she'd also seen the lithographs of famous courtesans being passed around by in the Sand Sea tavern enough times to know she didn't exactly measure up to those standards either. She didn’t have any sort of complex about her appearance, thank god, but there wasn’t anything about her that stood out either. If she was sure about anything in the madhouse that was turning out to be her life, she was sure about that.
Inexplicably, the young lord before her paused before his next words.
"Trust me," Larsa muttered, eyes suddenly fixed firmly on his lace-up boots, "I don't think anyone would dispute your physical ability to serve in such a capacity." And then, as though feeling the weight of her blank stare on him, he rushed on. "But in any case, Penelo, even if you don't think you look fine as is, you may well dabble in... makeup and dresses and all of those other feminine... accruements. So, if that is the only problem you have with this idea, we could go purchase these items together and--"
"It isn't!" she interrupted with a near howl. "I mean, I know I really owe you one, Lar-- Lord Larsa, but this is asking a lot of me! We've barely even met--" (never mind that she was screaming at him already, oh, he must have such such a high opinion of her rationality right now) "--and how do you know that I'd even be able to help you? How do you know I can do what you want me to and not somehow screw up somewhere along the way?”
"Because." And suddenly, what seemed to be all the authority of the ages swelled into Larsa's voice for a moment, until Penelo was reminded forcefully of another Archadian royal that had walked into Rabanastre a while back. Hell, considering how tangled noble bloodlines tended to be, that other one was probably his half-sister’s cousin‘s nephew’s chocobo herder, or something like that. No wonder there was a family resemblance.
But any thought of that fled her mind quickly when he straightened before her and looked down at her with glittering eyes and a set mouth and one imperial chin delicately raised in the air. If ever she had had doubts about the blue blood in his veins, they were rapidly evaporating now. “Because when someone of House Solidor has a plan, we work beforehand to make sure it’s fool proof… and ensure that all falls into place afterwards.”
Then he smiled at her, one corner of his mouth tilting further up than the other, till Penelo’s flurry of emotions settled underneath that almost delicate expression. “And considering how neither of us are fools at all, that first part might not even apply. I… know now that what I’m asking of you is very difficult indeed. But if you’re willing to play this part with me, it would be of great help-- to both my kingdom and yours.” Finally, with his smile tilting up even further, Larsa added, “Besides, considering how strongly Vaan stressed your affinity with magic, the learning you’ll find if you let me take you north might surprise you. You might even be able to garner some pleasure from the trip after all.”
Flushing unaccountably under that final smile, Penelo could barely stammer out her next reply. “I’ll have to think about that one. If I decide to go and all. And, um, I'm sorry if I've been acting like an opium-addled den whore for most of this conversation. It’s… well, it’s just been a rough couple of days.” Then, looking up at him plaintively, she promised, "I'll be a little more rational when I wake up."
And with that, Penelo managed to stagger a few inches to the right, just enough to ensure she would meet bed and not ground when gravity inevitably came down on her, and fell to what seemed the best deserved nap she'd ever had.
***
She woke up, a small eternity later, to what seemed like bird-song.
Underneath her closed lids, she could hear it strum through the air around her, gentle, moon-mad music that reminded her of lazy Sundays in bed in years that had long since left her. Somehow, the gentle vibrations of the music seemed to settle right into her skin, seemed to remind her of a place that now seemed impossibly far away, of people now long gone. Somehow, despite all that had happened to her in the last few days, she was reminded irresistibly of all the things that had already fallen away-- of Vaan’s bad humming and Migelo’s booming voice, of her worn slippers at home and her failed attempts at having breakfast in the bath, of her father’s scratchy chin hair and her mother’s calloused hands, of her brother’s vicious elbows and even more impossibly evil laugh.
For a minute, it was almost as though she were back again in Rabanastre, back home, back to a place where Bangaa bounty hunters and imperial judges of terrifying, world-conquering empires could never affect her again. And for what seemed the longest moment in a long, long while, all Penelo wanted to do was unfurl her body from underneath the soft, fluffy bed covers someone had placed upon her and listen to that sweet, soft, beautiful melody.
Then she opened her eyes and turned her head and saw it was none other than Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, hunched over the desk beside her bed, almost wordlessly murmuring a tune that still seemed to vibrate against her bones, even after she knew who was singing it and why hearing him do so ought to feel so wrong.
And then he turned to her and in the golden halo of luminous light that seemed to consume him for a minute-- how much time had passed since they had first met? Was it the next morning already?-- he looked almost…
He hadn‘t been handsome, not the first time she had seen him; he had looked like a noble and they weren‘t, for all their fine breeding, very aesthetically pleasing people. He had a rather heavy chin and too a long nose, ears that stuck out prominently and a ridiculously, almost girlishly full mouth, cheekbones that looked too sharp for his face and long, silky hair she found to be almost unfairly beautiful-- unfair, in this case, meaning far better than hers.
But somehow, all of those faults seemed to be erased and consumed by the soft golden light against him, until he looked every bit like the guardian angel he had been so determined to be when they had first met.
None of this, still, was anything she should be noticing.
“Oh,” she finally said, after realizing it was rather impolite to look for so long or gape at him like someone had just slapped her upside the head with a dead haddock. “It’s… I just… it really wasn’t a … you were really… oh.“
“Good morning,” Larsa said pleasantly in turn, and the very sound of his voice made her feel… lost. “And it is morning now. You’ve been slumbering away for almost two days, in case you’ve wondered.”
“Oh,” she said some more, because clearly practical thought seemed to have abandoned her just as thoroughly as luck had this week. And at that, Larsa laughed and threw his head back as he did so, exposing the long, lean curve of his throat, brown and shining and beautiful when set against the ruff of his snow pale shirt.
Swallowing hard, Penelo forced herself to look past him and at the windows open wide at the edges of the bedroom. Windows were good. They were very good. You could look out at them and see things beyond them and not fall out while you were doing so. They were nice, good, shiny objects that couldn’t possibly bring her as much grief as the boy before her. That way lay madness, especially if she ended up going along with his scheme. Boys, especially beautiful boys, usually led to nothing but trouble.
She already knew that much, anyway. She might have been only 16, but she had already figured that out.
“I’m sorry,” she finally managed. “I know I’ve been acting a little crazy since you first met me. Well, actually, make that a whole lot crazy. God, actually I’m still shocked that I’ve got all my limbs still working and attached to my body after I mouthed off an actual judge.” That, at least, bought out another smile. “But…” And then she looked at him, really looked at him, peering at him from underneath her fluttering lashes, just the way her mother had taught her for emergency use. This time, it was his turn to blink and let his eyes fly to the window-sills. “I’ve been running ragged-- a little too literally if you know what I mean and you probably do-- these last couple of days. Do you suppose I could maybe take a bath now? I mean, you don’t have to do anything more for me, of course, you’ve done plenty already. But…”
Penelo sort of just shrugged lamely by the end of it, feeling ridiculously embarrassed for no reason whatsoever. It hadn’t been her fault she had been kidnapped and manhandled by some of the nastiest gents this side of Ivalice, after all. “Well, it’d help.”
“I’m glad to hear so.” And when she looked at him, he turned so that she couldn’t read his face at all. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been planning on just that sort of contingency for days now. I’m sure your present ordeals have been dreadful and coming clean could only help. I have only one question left for you now, as a matter of fact.”
“Huh?” Penelo asked and then, flushing at how ignorant she must sound at this moment, continued. “What’s that?”
“Do you prefer bath crystals that are scented with rose or lavender?”
***
After a short time spent mulling over the delicate crystals he had presented to her with in both palms, rose in left and lavender in right, Penelo chose the former. And an hour later, with a stomach filled to bursting with Bhujerban delicacies, she was luxuriating in a bathtub the size of her bedroom in Rabanastre. Her biggest dilemma so far was being torn between sinking into the sweetly perfumed waters around her until every ache in her body faded and marveling at the sight of actual hot water pouring into her tub while she was in it. Apparently, they had pipes that could do those sorts of things in the Marquis of Ondore’s residence! Dear god, what would they think of next?
Maybe she wouldn’t kill Vaan when she finally hunted him down after all. Maim him a bit, sure-- the encounter with Judge Gooney and his stupid red pantaloons of doom alone was worth that much. But he’d been bitching about how awesome sky pirates looked with one eye patch so she didn’t see what was so bad about fixing it so he needed two. And she could always buy him a seeing eye chocobo afterwards, if worse came to worse.
Leaning back in the tub, having decided on the ‘sinking’ option after all, Penelo sighed as she felt the hot water gently support her weight and lap against her chin. It just felt so good to let go, to feel clean and whole and unharmed, to not have to worry about getting her head chopped off by overzealous mark huntsmen or possibly paraded on a pike by even bitchier Judge Magisters.
It felt even better, if possible, to feel comfortable in her skin once more. She had acting far more aggressively than usual for the last few days and, for all of Vaan’s stupid, obnoxious and completely unwarranted jokes about her being a complete and terrifying force of nature every few days of the month, she usually didn’t act like that. (Well, aside from when she had to run away that stupid Saurian in the Estersand of Dalmasca, anyway. She would kill that stupid reptile with her bare hands one day, she had long promised herself.) She’d been tired and cold and hungry and terrified out of her mind for most of the past few days and though she didn’t really blame herself-- no use doing so, what was done was done-- she knew she had to ship up before she really did get herself in even more trouble.
Not, she thought wistfully, that she was exactly in the home clear yet. In fact, it didn’t seem as though she was likely to go home for quite some time. Even if she somehow managed to get herself out in the streets of Bhujerba without someone coming after her to lop her head off and mount it in a trophy room in Archadia, chances were slim that she’d be able to afford a air ship ticket back to Rabanastre so easily.
If she still had her weapons or armor with her-- even a knife and cloak would do at this point-- she could have tried to head back to the tunnels and maybe kill a few weak bats for loot to sell. But she didn’t and even if she did, it would be dangerous to head back to a place that had had murderous Bangaa banging around it. So that route seemed to hold little promise for her.
There was still the option of working her way towards a ticket. She'd worked for Migelo's Sundries in Rabanastre and even did so well at being a shop-girl that he occasionally left her in charge and let her close up the store by herself. But Migelo was-- well, he wasn't like most other merchants. He actually trusted the orphans of Rabanstre, even though most of the people there, even those in Lowtown, treated them like a form of life only a little above actual sewer rats. And he trusted Penelo because he knew she had her head fixed more firmly on her shoulders than anyone else her age. God only knew that she was practically a shining beacon of industry and authority next to the likes of Vaan and Kytes.
But somehow, she doubted that the people of Bhujerba-- especially the merchants-- would suddenly decide to let a scrawny, ragged teenager nobody knew work in their businesses. And even if they did... where would she live in the meantime? Who could she stay with? She didn't much fancy the idea of being homeless for as long as she was in the sky city but that was becoming a very grim possibility.
But, as she clearly remembered her mother once saying, where a door closed, a window opened. And Larsa… Larsa could offer her just the window she needed to crawl through now.
Larsa himself was another puzzle, wrapped in a riddle, tossed inside a steel plated safe she didn’t have the combination for. He seemed kind, he really did-- he had gone out of his way to help her, he had apparently been concerned for her since he heard about her from Vaan, and he had talked of respecting her best friend which… actually, it just made her wonder about his taste but Vaan could be kind of endearing in his utter silliness so she let that go.
But still-- still. However kind he might be, he was of the ruling house of Archadia. He was a noble who had probably been pampered from the time he could walk onward. He was a blue-blood who had those walking monstrosities in tacky gold bling guarding him day and night.
And most importantly, he was the son of the emperor of Archadia, the man who had ordered the take-over of Dalmasca, who had released the plagues that had taken her parents in their sleep, who had authorized the wars that had slaughtered her brother on the front line.
His family had ruined hers before she had even turned fifteen years old.
She could hate him for that. Half the people in Rabanastre probably would have argued that she should, that having the blood of murderers in his veins made him just as good as one. And it was tempting to just throw Larsa, and all the very many complications he could bring into her life, into that category and just move on. It would just be easier in the long run.
But.
But he still seemed so… young in so many ways. Despite how incredibly tall he was, Larsa’s face was still all sharp angles crammed into a too-small space, his body was almost too thin for the enormous sword he carried even indoors, and he had the gangly grace of someone who hadn’t quite grown into his limbs yet.
And when he talked, when he had explained his plans to her… he seemed younger and more innocent still. Larsa had clearly put some thought into his plans and in fact, when he had first run through them, she had to give him credit for how surprisingly sharp and detailed his scheme was. But his assumption that she’d simply go along with his plans to help his empire, happy as could be despite her Dalmascan origins, made her boggle. In many ways, he seemed so… strangely coddled, like someone who had received his way for so long that the thought of conflicting desires puzzled him.
And for all the stereotypes, he didn’t seem particularly spoiled, which Penelo was grateful for because then she’d probably end up smothering him in his sleep during any journeys they took together and she didn’t much fancy life as a royal-killing fugitive. But he seemed… oddly naïve and sheltered from the real world and, for all her own faults, Penelo herself hadn’t been any of those things since the war.
People underestimated her, she knew that. They always had and they always would. Maybe it was because of her fair hair or her girlish features, her diminutive height or her willingness to blush at every stray innuendo, but they never seemed to quite believe that she was very strong. Very few people had ever looked at her, properly looked at her, and realized that she was someone who had managed to survive war in her kingdom, who had endured the death of almost all her family and loved ones, who had managed to scrape out a living doing odd jobs since the age of 14 with no-one but her best friend at her back.
But she was all these things, and more. She was the daughter of a man who had somehow owned a magical shop despite a complete formal lack of training. She was the child of a woman who had borne six children and buried four of them almost before their birth and still carried stubbornly on. And she was the sister of the single toughest, pettiest, most obnoxious jackass Rabanastre might have ever known, the man who was still famous for muscling his way into an order of knights despite their family’s thoroughly common origins and less than sainted blood.
She didn’t have the royal blood of kings running through her veins, which was just as well considering how thoroughly obliterated the nobility of Dalmasca was now. But she had hardiness and fortitude bred into her bones and coiled in her blood and if fate thought a little something like being completely over her head in a world of princes and politics would throw her off, it had another thought coming.
True, she hadn't had much of a head-start on her triumph-over-all-adversity goal, what with her doing the whole damsel-in-distress, fainting-after-too-much-drama thing to an extent that annoyed even her. But she could still work with these drawbacks. In fact, she might even work better with these drawbacks, since very few people tended to play hardball with girls who seemed ever so fragile and susceptible to the ills of the world.
Penelo had never been the most devious person in the world, but she knew how to take her advantages when they came at her. She had little enough else in her corner, after all.
With a look of steely determination that would have impressed Vaan if he were around to see it, Penelo lifted herself out of the tub and reached out for a towel. It was time to stop reminiscing and start investigating, to stop daydreaming and start negotiating… and to figure out what, exactly, she would have to do or who she could help if she went along with Larsa’s plans in the months to come.
***
Author’s Note: Next time! Our would-be couple paints the town red! Larsa unveils more of his fiendish plot! And Penelo has to get accustomed to a few strange customs…
Incidentally, is anyone perhaps willing to become my plot beta for this fic? I need someone who I can bounce my ideas off of and who’d be willing to whack me in the face with something pointy when they get too dopey, outrageous or intricate. Is anyone out there with writing/beta-ing experience perhaps tempted? I can bribe you with lots of shiny drabble fic!
In any case, this particular chapter is dedicated to Serindrana, because she very kindly reminded me of the existence of this series, and to Zamnandi, because she was the very person to ever review the first chapter. With reviewers as good as you two sweethearts, who needs betas? ;) (But more on that point later!)
And as always, reviews, comments and constructive criticism are always adored-- especially for this series! I freely admit to this being the first long-running narrative I’ve ever tried penning and any help is greatly appreciated.
Title: In The Hour Before Us, Chapter 2
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: In The Hour Before Us
Pairings: Larsa/Penelo
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Boy meets girl. Boy rescues girl. Boy then technically kidnaps girl. When Penelo first meets Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, she has no idea what's in store for her...
Note: AU, Older!Larsa.
***
It was hard not to be appalled by Larsa's plan when he first explained it, no matter how sweetly or earnestly he went about doing so. And the terrible thing was that Larsa really was very sweet and earnest and wide-eyed in an almost charming way as he went about systematically breaking Penelo’s brains with his carefully placed words. All in all, after about a half an hour’s worth of explanations, all Penelo could do was sit in a state of mild shock (this seemed to be turning into her default emotion more and more as life piled on its surprises) and ask him to go over all of it again.
"Can you," Penelo said slowly, clearly, so the royal madman before her could understand, "please summarize what you want me to do? In smaller and more colorful words? So my brain doesn‘t hurt this time?"
At least Larsa was game (or desperate) enough to give it a try. "It's all very simple, Penelo. All I need you do is come with me to Archades, pretend to be my… special female friend while we travel together for a while, train me to pass as an ordinary Rabanastran citizen, kidnap me back to your city and help me figure out the truth of a few… interesting allegations made about the politics within it. It really shouldn’t take more than a few months-- a year at most-- of your time and I shall make sure that you’re handsomely compensated for your efforts afterwards.”
Unfortunately, it didn't make any more sense the second time around. Either she had lost her mind and this was just a bad fever dream that came from unwisely ingesting Vaan’s experiments in Ordalian cooking (which tended to be heavy on potential hallucinogens) or all the inbreeding that nobility did as a matter of course was finally manifesting itself with a vengeance right in front of her appalled eyes.
She didn’t know what was a worse possibility and really just wanted to retire discreetly to bed with a wet washcloth over her forehead right now.
And yet, it was surprisingly hard to look into Larsa's earnest face and turn him down. But it was equally difficult not to be shocked at the idea of parading around one of the grandest courts of Ivalice while pretending to be... what it was that he wanted her to pretend to be… and kidnapping one of its blue-blooded notables right afterwards. So in the end, Penelo had to go with her first impulse.
"Absolutely not," Penelo said, firmly and carefully, though she ended up wanting to immediately comfort a stricken Larsa afterwards. Maybe the real power of the Archadian empire lay not so much in their magic or might but in the way the ruling house had of guilt-tripping enemies into compliance.
It would go a long way towards soothing wounded her Dalmascan pride about how quickly her empire had folded so quickly against it, anyhow.
"I'm really sorry," she tried again in the midst of some seriously damaging puppy eyes, "but when I used to dream of a man bringing me home as a little girl, this wasn't exactly what came to mind. Even putting aside all the ways this could go wrong-- and there are so many ways this could go wrong-- what makes you think I would even be believable as a-- well-- a-- you know what you want me to be! I mean, I know I'm not ugly enough to go around with a paper bag on my head, but I'm still not really, you know..."
Beautiful, that was what she meant. She wasn't exactly beautiful. She'd be cat-called by enough construction workers on her way to and from her dancing job at the Muthru Bazaar (really, where was the Archadian empire hiring these perverts?) to know she wasn't offensive looking. But she'd also seen the lithographs of famous courtesans being passed around by in the Sand Sea tavern enough times to know she didn't exactly measure up to those standards either. She didn’t have any sort of complex about her appearance, thank god, but there wasn’t anything about her that stood out either. If she was sure about anything in the madhouse that was turning out to be her life, she was sure about that.
Inexplicably, the young lord before her paused before his next words.
"Trust me," Larsa muttered, eyes suddenly fixed firmly on his lace-up boots, "I don't think anyone would dispute your physical ability to serve in such a capacity." And then, as though feeling the weight of her blank stare on him, he rushed on. "But in any case, Penelo, even if you don't think you look fine as is, you may well dabble in... makeup and dresses and all of those other feminine... accruements. So, if that is the only problem you have with this idea, we could go purchase these items together and--"
"It isn't!" she interrupted with a near howl. "I mean, I know I really owe you one, Lar-- Lord Larsa, but this is asking a lot of me! We've barely even met--" (never mind that she was screaming at him already, oh, he must have such such a high opinion of her rationality right now) "--and how do you know that I'd even be able to help you? How do you know I can do what you want me to and not somehow screw up somewhere along the way?”
"Because." And suddenly, what seemed to be all the authority of the ages swelled into Larsa's voice for a moment, until Penelo was reminded forcefully of another Archadian royal that had walked into Rabanastre a while back. Hell, considering how tangled noble bloodlines tended to be, that other one was probably his half-sister’s cousin‘s nephew’s chocobo herder, or something like that. No wonder there was a family resemblance.
But any thought of that fled her mind quickly when he straightened before her and looked down at her with glittering eyes and a set mouth and one imperial chin delicately raised in the air. If ever she had had doubts about the blue blood in his veins, they were rapidly evaporating now. “Because when someone of House Solidor has a plan, we work beforehand to make sure it’s fool proof… and ensure that all falls into place afterwards.”
Then he smiled at her, one corner of his mouth tilting further up than the other, till Penelo’s flurry of emotions settled underneath that almost delicate expression. “And considering how neither of us are fools at all, that first part might not even apply. I… know now that what I’m asking of you is very difficult indeed. But if you’re willing to play this part with me, it would be of great help-- to both my kingdom and yours.” Finally, with his smile tilting up even further, Larsa added, “Besides, considering how strongly Vaan stressed your affinity with magic, the learning you’ll find if you let me take you north might surprise you. You might even be able to garner some pleasure from the trip after all.”
Flushing unaccountably under that final smile, Penelo could barely stammer out her next reply. “I’ll have to think about that one. If I decide to go and all. And, um, I'm sorry if I've been acting like an opium-addled den whore for most of this conversation. It’s… well, it’s just been a rough couple of days.” Then, looking up at him plaintively, she promised, "I'll be a little more rational when I wake up."
And with that, Penelo managed to stagger a few inches to the right, just enough to ensure she would meet bed and not ground when gravity inevitably came down on her, and fell to what seemed the best deserved nap she'd ever had.
***
She woke up, a small eternity later, to what seemed like bird-song.
Underneath her closed lids, she could hear it strum through the air around her, gentle, moon-mad music that reminded her of lazy Sundays in bed in years that had long since left her. Somehow, the gentle vibrations of the music seemed to settle right into her skin, seemed to remind her of a place that now seemed impossibly far away, of people now long gone. Somehow, despite all that had happened to her in the last few days, she was reminded irresistibly of all the things that had already fallen away-- of Vaan’s bad humming and Migelo’s booming voice, of her worn slippers at home and her failed attempts at having breakfast in the bath, of her father’s scratchy chin hair and her mother’s calloused hands, of her brother’s vicious elbows and even more impossibly evil laugh.
For a minute, it was almost as though she were back again in Rabanastre, back home, back to a place where Bangaa bounty hunters and imperial judges of terrifying, world-conquering empires could never affect her again. And for what seemed the longest moment in a long, long while, all Penelo wanted to do was unfurl her body from underneath the soft, fluffy bed covers someone had placed upon her and listen to that sweet, soft, beautiful melody.
Then she opened her eyes and turned her head and saw it was none other than Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, hunched over the desk beside her bed, almost wordlessly murmuring a tune that still seemed to vibrate against her bones, even after she knew who was singing it and why hearing him do so ought to feel so wrong.
And then he turned to her and in the golden halo of luminous light that seemed to consume him for a minute-- how much time had passed since they had first met? Was it the next morning already?-- he looked almost…
He hadn‘t been handsome, not the first time she had seen him; he had looked like a noble and they weren‘t, for all their fine breeding, very aesthetically pleasing people. He had a rather heavy chin and too a long nose, ears that stuck out prominently and a ridiculously, almost girlishly full mouth, cheekbones that looked too sharp for his face and long, silky hair she found to be almost unfairly beautiful-- unfair, in this case, meaning far better than hers.
But somehow, all of those faults seemed to be erased and consumed by the soft golden light against him, until he looked every bit like the guardian angel he had been so determined to be when they had first met.
None of this, still, was anything she should be noticing.
“Oh,” she finally said, after realizing it was rather impolite to look for so long or gape at him like someone had just slapped her upside the head with a dead haddock. “It’s… I just… it really wasn’t a … you were really… oh.“
“Good morning,” Larsa said pleasantly in turn, and the very sound of his voice made her feel… lost. “And it is morning now. You’ve been slumbering away for almost two days, in case you’ve wondered.”
“Oh,” she said some more, because clearly practical thought seemed to have abandoned her just as thoroughly as luck had this week. And at that, Larsa laughed and threw his head back as he did so, exposing the long, lean curve of his throat, brown and shining and beautiful when set against the ruff of his snow pale shirt.
Swallowing hard, Penelo forced herself to look past him and at the windows open wide at the edges of the bedroom. Windows were good. They were very good. You could look out at them and see things beyond them and not fall out while you were doing so. They were nice, good, shiny objects that couldn’t possibly bring her as much grief as the boy before her. That way lay madness, especially if she ended up going along with his scheme. Boys, especially beautiful boys, usually led to nothing but trouble.
She already knew that much, anyway. She might have been only 16, but she had already figured that out.
“I’m sorry,” she finally managed. “I know I’ve been acting a little crazy since you first met me. Well, actually, make that a whole lot crazy. God, actually I’m still shocked that I’ve got all my limbs still working and attached to my body after I mouthed off an actual judge.” That, at least, bought out another smile. “But…” And then she looked at him, really looked at him, peering at him from underneath her fluttering lashes, just the way her mother had taught her for emergency use. This time, it was his turn to blink and let his eyes fly to the window-sills. “I’ve been running ragged-- a little too literally if you know what I mean and you probably do-- these last couple of days. Do you suppose I could maybe take a bath now? I mean, you don’t have to do anything more for me, of course, you’ve done plenty already. But…”
Penelo sort of just shrugged lamely by the end of it, feeling ridiculously embarrassed for no reason whatsoever. It hadn’t been her fault she had been kidnapped and manhandled by some of the nastiest gents this side of Ivalice, after all. “Well, it’d help.”
“I’m glad to hear so.” And when she looked at him, he turned so that she couldn’t read his face at all. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been planning on just that sort of contingency for days now. I’m sure your present ordeals have been dreadful and coming clean could only help. I have only one question left for you now, as a matter of fact.”
“Huh?” Penelo asked and then, flushing at how ignorant she must sound at this moment, continued. “What’s that?”
“Do you prefer bath crystals that are scented with rose or lavender?”
***
After a short time spent mulling over the delicate crystals he had presented to her with in both palms, rose in left and lavender in right, Penelo chose the former. And an hour later, with a stomach filled to bursting with Bhujerban delicacies, she was luxuriating in a bathtub the size of her bedroom in Rabanastre. Her biggest dilemma so far was being torn between sinking into the sweetly perfumed waters around her until every ache in her body faded and marveling at the sight of actual hot water pouring into her tub while she was in it. Apparently, they had pipes that could do those sorts of things in the Marquis of Ondore’s residence! Dear god, what would they think of next?
Maybe she wouldn’t kill Vaan when she finally hunted him down after all. Maim him a bit, sure-- the encounter with Judge Gooney and his stupid red pantaloons of doom alone was worth that much. But he’d been bitching about how awesome sky pirates looked with one eye patch so she didn’t see what was so bad about fixing it so he needed two. And she could always buy him a seeing eye chocobo afterwards, if worse came to worse.
Leaning back in the tub, having decided on the ‘sinking’ option after all, Penelo sighed as she felt the hot water gently support her weight and lap against her chin. It just felt so good to let go, to feel clean and whole and unharmed, to not have to worry about getting her head chopped off by overzealous mark huntsmen or possibly paraded on a pike by even bitchier Judge Magisters.
It felt even better, if possible, to feel comfortable in her skin once more. She had acting far more aggressively than usual for the last few days and, for all of Vaan’s stupid, obnoxious and completely unwarranted jokes about her being a complete and terrifying force of nature every few days of the month, she usually didn’t act like that. (Well, aside from when she had to run away that stupid Saurian in the Estersand of Dalmasca, anyway. She would kill that stupid reptile with her bare hands one day, she had long promised herself.) She’d been tired and cold and hungry and terrified out of her mind for most of the past few days and though she didn’t really blame herself-- no use doing so, what was done was done-- she knew she had to ship up before she really did get herself in even more trouble.
Not, she thought wistfully, that she was exactly in the home clear yet. In fact, it didn’t seem as though she was likely to go home for quite some time. Even if she somehow managed to get herself out in the streets of Bhujerba without someone coming after her to lop her head off and mount it in a trophy room in Archadia, chances were slim that she’d be able to afford a air ship ticket back to Rabanastre so easily.
If she still had her weapons or armor with her-- even a knife and cloak would do at this point-- she could have tried to head back to the tunnels and maybe kill a few weak bats for loot to sell. But she didn’t and even if she did, it would be dangerous to head back to a place that had had murderous Bangaa banging around it. So that route seemed to hold little promise for her.
There was still the option of working her way towards a ticket. She'd worked for Migelo's Sundries in Rabanastre and even did so well at being a shop-girl that he occasionally left her in charge and let her close up the store by herself. But Migelo was-- well, he wasn't like most other merchants. He actually trusted the orphans of Rabanstre, even though most of the people there, even those in Lowtown, treated them like a form of life only a little above actual sewer rats. And he trusted Penelo because he knew she had her head fixed more firmly on her shoulders than anyone else her age. God only knew that she was practically a shining beacon of industry and authority next to the likes of Vaan and Kytes.
But somehow, she doubted that the people of Bhujerba-- especially the merchants-- would suddenly decide to let a scrawny, ragged teenager nobody knew work in their businesses. And even if they did... where would she live in the meantime? Who could she stay with? She didn't much fancy the idea of being homeless for as long as she was in the sky city but that was becoming a very grim possibility.
But, as she clearly remembered her mother once saying, where a door closed, a window opened. And Larsa… Larsa could offer her just the window she needed to crawl through now.
Larsa himself was another puzzle, wrapped in a riddle, tossed inside a steel plated safe she didn’t have the combination for. He seemed kind, he really did-- he had gone out of his way to help her, he had apparently been concerned for her since he heard about her from Vaan, and he had talked of respecting her best friend which… actually, it just made her wonder about his taste but Vaan could be kind of endearing in his utter silliness so she let that go.
But still-- still. However kind he might be, he was of the ruling house of Archadia. He was a noble who had probably been pampered from the time he could walk onward. He was a blue-blood who had those walking monstrosities in tacky gold bling guarding him day and night.
And most importantly, he was the son of the emperor of Archadia, the man who had ordered the take-over of Dalmasca, who had released the plagues that had taken her parents in their sleep, who had authorized the wars that had slaughtered her brother on the front line.
His family had ruined hers before she had even turned fifteen years old.
She could hate him for that. Half the people in Rabanastre probably would have argued that she should, that having the blood of murderers in his veins made him just as good as one. And it was tempting to just throw Larsa, and all the very many complications he could bring into her life, into that category and just move on. It would just be easier in the long run.
But.
But he still seemed so… young in so many ways. Despite how incredibly tall he was, Larsa’s face was still all sharp angles crammed into a too-small space, his body was almost too thin for the enormous sword he carried even indoors, and he had the gangly grace of someone who hadn’t quite grown into his limbs yet.
And when he talked, when he had explained his plans to her… he seemed younger and more innocent still. Larsa had clearly put some thought into his plans and in fact, when he had first run through them, she had to give him credit for how surprisingly sharp and detailed his scheme was. But his assumption that she’d simply go along with his plans to help his empire, happy as could be despite her Dalmascan origins, made her boggle. In many ways, he seemed so… strangely coddled, like someone who had received his way for so long that the thought of conflicting desires puzzled him.
And for all the stereotypes, he didn’t seem particularly spoiled, which Penelo was grateful for because then she’d probably end up smothering him in his sleep during any journeys they took together and she didn’t much fancy life as a royal-killing fugitive. But he seemed… oddly naïve and sheltered from the real world and, for all her own faults, Penelo herself hadn’t been any of those things since the war.
People underestimated her, she knew that. They always had and they always would. Maybe it was because of her fair hair or her girlish features, her diminutive height or her willingness to blush at every stray innuendo, but they never seemed to quite believe that she was very strong. Very few people had ever looked at her, properly looked at her, and realized that she was someone who had managed to survive war in her kingdom, who had endured the death of almost all her family and loved ones, who had managed to scrape out a living doing odd jobs since the age of 14 with no-one but her best friend at her back.
But she was all these things, and more. She was the daughter of a man who had somehow owned a magical shop despite a complete formal lack of training. She was the child of a woman who had borne six children and buried four of them almost before their birth and still carried stubbornly on. And she was the sister of the single toughest, pettiest, most obnoxious jackass Rabanastre might have ever known, the man who was still famous for muscling his way into an order of knights despite their family’s thoroughly common origins and less than sainted blood.
She didn’t have the royal blood of kings running through her veins, which was just as well considering how thoroughly obliterated the nobility of Dalmasca was now. But she had hardiness and fortitude bred into her bones and coiled in her blood and if fate thought a little something like being completely over her head in a world of princes and politics would throw her off, it had another thought coming.
True, she hadn't had much of a head-start on her triumph-over-all-adversity goal, what with her doing the whole damsel-in-distress, fainting-after-too-much-drama thing to an extent that annoyed even her. But she could still work with these drawbacks. In fact, she might even work better with these drawbacks, since very few people tended to play hardball with girls who seemed ever so fragile and susceptible to the ills of the world.
Penelo had never been the most devious person in the world, but she knew how to take her advantages when they came at her. She had little enough else in her corner, after all.
With a look of steely determination that would have impressed Vaan if he were around to see it, Penelo lifted herself out of the tub and reached out for a towel. It was time to stop reminiscing and start investigating, to stop daydreaming and start negotiating… and to figure out what, exactly, she would have to do or who she could help if she went along with Larsa’s plans in the months to come.
***
Author’s Note: Next time! Our would-be couple paints the town red! Larsa unveils more of his fiendish plot! And Penelo has to get accustomed to a few strange customs…
Incidentally, is anyone perhaps willing to become my plot beta for this fic? I need someone who I can bounce my ideas off of and who’d be willing to whack me in the face with something pointy when they get too dopey, outrageous or intricate. Is anyone out there with writing/beta-ing experience perhaps tempted? I can bribe you with lots of shiny drabble fic!