FFXII Fic: Bloom Upon the Bough Ch 5: In Another Life (Larsa/Penelo)
Mea culpa for this. I just couldn't finish that second chapter of Sexual Politics in time to post this week so I just yanked a much older fic up and posting it here. In any case, this morsel is for ladyassassin. She asked me to write about jealousy and my mind ended up here. Apparently I am unable to write about such without dipping straight into tragedy. My apologies to Dante Alighieri and Jorge Luis Borges ahead of time.
And comments, corrections and criticism are, as always, completely welcome and loved. After all, a little encouragement never fails to add a bit of inspiration...
Title: In Another Life
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: Bloom Upon the Bough (Chapter 5)
Characters/Pairings: Larsa/Penelo
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In another life, perhaps. Just never in this one.
Whenever she pictured him, she would see him first as he had once existed, a young boy before his would-be-bride within their library sanctuary. In the farthest, dearest, most intimate corners of her mind, he would always exist, perpetually young and perpetually studying, the smooth, dark strands of his hair cascading over his face and onto the words of his current volume of text, only to be brushed haphazardly away. In that one part of her that neither time nor adversity could touch, he would always lie before her in the fire of his manse, pale face glowing with gentle happiness and thin lips parting to show flashes of small white teeth, smile growing only wider and wider as he found yet another morself from his stacks to puzzle her with entirely.
In that kernel within her, she could keep the memory of what he had once been safe, unable to be tainted by anything.
"Look at this," he would say. "Listen to this if it doesn't bother you excessively." And then he would quote from one of his fathomless texts, their philosophical density somehow only compounded by his calm, cool voice, by gestures meant to convey meaning she could not find therein. And he would speak what were merely meaningless ephitets to her, from Coleridge, from Schopenhaur, from Dante, from the Greeks: 'Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere-- Life is a sickness of the spirit-- leben ist eine, krankert des geistes, en leidenschaft lichen ten-- don't let the Masons say the Church introduced these atrocities-- Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled-- It thinks-- questi, che mai de me non fia diviso--"
So he would go on, busy , busy with a world that largely precluded her but so intent on folding her within it anyway. So she would go on, rising to the edge of her seat, watching the fire paint bright, flickering sparks on the forever young and timeless face. So they would eventually find themselves kneeling together in a light flickering and fierce, looking and looking and looking at each other as if any moment either could fade away without warning. Because even then, at only seventeen, he had known as well as she did that once someone left, once someone walked away, there was always the possibility that this would be the last glimpse of them you would ever see.
He was an orphan and she was an orphan and they knew loss as well as they knew the warmth of each other's bodies. He had known and she had known and every touch they had once given had held the trickle of the river of Acheron between their aching bodies. And the world was not kind in that case, would never be kind in any case, and she was not his and he was not hers and they had no means between their two bodies to bind each other fast and to keep each other safe.
But still would she keep his memory within her, sacrosanct enough to make her ache with longing, till she was old and still and gray.
Because always, always would she remember that absurd creature near the fire's light; always, always would she be imprinted with the memory of his face and his eyes, his voice and his smile, and the irredeemable voice that drifted out of the darkness, imprinted with the wisdom and the scholarship and the bewilderment of centuries, of questions as to why he could not have what he desired over and above everything.
And never, never would she, accursed from the first moment she had met him, doomed to never possess what she loved more than anything, forget that all that made her want him so fiercely was everything she understood and deserved least.
She would always remember him, all face and fervor, all lilt and languor, that irredeemable voice drifting in and out of her memory. She would always remember him, pale lips parting with a smile as he told her again about that ancient tale of lovers narrated by a pitying torturer, by a man who had known of both ardor and agony. She would always remember him and his impossible stories, as strange as ever the light of idealism had been to her. Because she knew that, after they parted, there would never be any recourse for them, as for the doomed lovers he had spoken of before.
They had not even hell as a meeting ground. When they had parted, they had parted forever and nothing could bridge that ending.
"Whenever I think of love, Penelo, I think first of Paola and Francesca from that most divine of comedies. Do you think they were happy, side by side in that infernal paradise? Even if they could not touch, even if they could not speak?"
She would always remember him, onyx and ivory and just as irretrievable as anyone else she had ever loved, lips brushing against hers as he told her about destiny.
"Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso-- which of course means 'this one, who shall never be parted from me'..."
She would always remember his words about those doomed lovers, could do naught but remember his stories.
"Do you think they were happy together, my Penelo? Do you think that fate could one day be ours to meet?"
She would always remember him and those doomed lovers he had spoken of, united despite everything in a heaven that would never part them, in a hell that would never cease.
“Shall I exist for you eternally, even after we have both wasted all of our living years?”
With appalling love, with anxiety, with admiration, with envy.
---
Author's Note: And in case you're still a bit confused as to what's going on, the following quotation from an essay Jorge Luis Borges wrote about Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy may clear matters up. Note that the last line of this piece comes straight from Borges.
“Beatrice existed infinitely for Dante. Dante very little, perhaps not at all, for Beatrice. All of us tend to forget, out of pity, out of veneration, this grievous discord which for Dante was unforgettable. Reading and rereading the vicissitudes of his illusory meeting, I thik of the two lovers that Alighieri dreamed in the hurricane of the second circle and who, whether or not he understood or wanted them to be, were obscure emblems of the joy he did not attain. I think of Paolo and Francesca, forever united in their Inferno: “questi, che mai da me non fia diviso” [this one, who never shall be parted from me]. With appalling love, with anxiety, with admiration, with envy.” --Jorge Luis Borges, 1978, pp 103 from Selected Non-Fictions.
And comments, corrections and criticism are, as always, completely welcome and loved. After all, a little encouragement never fails to add a bit of inspiration...
Title: In Another Life
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: Bloom Upon the Bough (Chapter 5)
Characters/Pairings: Larsa/Penelo
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In another life, perhaps. Just never in this one.
Whenever she pictured him, she would see him first as he had once existed, a young boy before his would-be-bride within their library sanctuary. In the farthest, dearest, most intimate corners of her mind, he would always exist, perpetually young and perpetually studying, the smooth, dark strands of his hair cascading over his face and onto the words of his current volume of text, only to be brushed haphazardly away. In that one part of her that neither time nor adversity could touch, he would always lie before her in the fire of his manse, pale face glowing with gentle happiness and thin lips parting to show flashes of small white teeth, smile growing only wider and wider as he found yet another morself from his stacks to puzzle her with entirely.
In that kernel within her, she could keep the memory of what he had once been safe, unable to be tainted by anything.
"Look at this," he would say. "Listen to this if it doesn't bother you excessively." And then he would quote from one of his fathomless texts, their philosophical density somehow only compounded by his calm, cool voice, by gestures meant to convey meaning she could not find therein. And he would speak what were merely meaningless ephitets to her, from Coleridge, from Schopenhaur, from Dante, from the Greeks: 'Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere-- Life is a sickness of the spirit-- leben ist eine, krankert des geistes, en leidenschaft lichen ten-- don't let the Masons say the Church introduced these atrocities-- Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled-- It thinks-- questi, che mai de me non fia diviso--"
So he would go on, busy , busy with a world that largely precluded her but so intent on folding her within it anyway. So she would go on, rising to the edge of her seat, watching the fire paint bright, flickering sparks on the forever young and timeless face. So they would eventually find themselves kneeling together in a light flickering and fierce, looking and looking and looking at each other as if any moment either could fade away without warning. Because even then, at only seventeen, he had known as well as she did that once someone left, once someone walked away, there was always the possibility that this would be the last glimpse of them you would ever see.
He was an orphan and she was an orphan and they knew loss as well as they knew the warmth of each other's bodies. He had known and she had known and every touch they had once given had held the trickle of the river of Acheron between their aching bodies. And the world was not kind in that case, would never be kind in any case, and she was not his and he was not hers and they had no means between their two bodies to bind each other fast and to keep each other safe.
But still would she keep his memory within her, sacrosanct enough to make her ache with longing, till she was old and still and gray.
Because always, always would she remember that absurd creature near the fire's light; always, always would she be imprinted with the memory of his face and his eyes, his voice and his smile, and the irredeemable voice that drifted out of the darkness, imprinted with the wisdom and the scholarship and the bewilderment of centuries, of questions as to why he could not have what he desired over and above everything.
And never, never would she, accursed from the first moment she had met him, doomed to never possess what she loved more than anything, forget that all that made her want him so fiercely was everything she understood and deserved least.
She would always remember him, all face and fervor, all lilt and languor, that irredeemable voice drifting in and out of her memory. She would always remember him, pale lips parting with a smile as he told her again about that ancient tale of lovers narrated by a pitying torturer, by a man who had known of both ardor and agony. She would always remember him and his impossible stories, as strange as ever the light of idealism had been to her. Because she knew that, after they parted, there would never be any recourse for them, as for the doomed lovers he had spoken of before.
They had not even hell as a meeting ground. When they had parted, they had parted forever and nothing could bridge that ending.
"Whenever I think of love, Penelo, I think first of Paola and Francesca from that most divine of comedies. Do you think they were happy, side by side in that infernal paradise? Even if they could not touch, even if they could not speak?"
She would always remember him, onyx and ivory and just as irretrievable as anyone else she had ever loved, lips brushing against hers as he told her about destiny.
"Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso-- which of course means 'this one, who shall never be parted from me'..."
She would always remember his words about those doomed lovers, could do naught but remember his stories.
"Do you think they were happy together, my Penelo? Do you think that fate could one day be ours to meet?"
She would always remember him and those doomed lovers he had spoken of, united despite everything in a heaven that would never part them, in a hell that would never cease.
“Shall I exist for you eternally, even after we have both wasted all of our living years?”
With appalling love, with anxiety, with admiration, with envy.
---
Author's Note: And in case you're still a bit confused as to what's going on, the following quotation from an essay Jorge Luis Borges wrote about Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy may clear matters up. Note that the last line of this piece comes straight from Borges.
“Beatrice existed infinitely for Dante. Dante very little, perhaps not at all, for Beatrice. All of us tend to forget, out of pity, out of veneration, this grievous discord which for Dante was unforgettable. Reading and rereading the vicissitudes of his illusory meeting, I thik of the two lovers that Alighieri dreamed in the hurricane of the second circle and who, whether or not he understood or wanted them to be, were obscure emblems of the joy he did not attain. I think of Paolo and Francesca, forever united in their Inferno: “questi, che mai da me non fia diviso” [this one, who never shall be parted from me]. With appalling love, with anxiety, with admiration, with envy.” --Jorge Luis Borges, 1978, pp 103 from Selected Non-Fictions.