Out of Eden [Final Fantasy XII.Vayne x Gabranth.NC17]
Out of Eden
Today, or this day, or the last: he could never be too sure, with time here, and surely, the concept of time was an anachronism to the dead - today, this day, the last, the Eternal City was baked of mud whitened under a sun that didn’t sear his eyes when he looked up. He did, however, stretch once it crept past his brow, curled on his pallet in the room he shared with a boy-philosopher and an old fisherman; he yawned, for habit, not breath, and reached for the blade tucked between the rough bed and the wall. The rest of his effects he kept in a small crate at the corner of his side of the room. Fine clothes, they, the evidence though not the memory of his past, so fine that even the boy had exclaimed over their weave and the iridescence of their scale; it felt scandalous wearing them out just to sit in the sun.
The fisherman had long awoken and left, but the boy, Jayne, was eating in the room, bread crumbling into his lap. “A good and hale morning to you, my nameless roommate! Did any mysteries stumble upon you in the dead of night?”
“Nay.” He always humored this. Wandering in the Grey had taught him the value of willing, friendly conversation. “And you, friend, any revelations?”
“Sad to say my muse has quite abandoned me,” Jayne said, with a show of equal self-importance and regret, the loaf in his hand waved past his brow. “So here is an older knowing for you, Nameless One: he who rises always past the dawn will never accomplish anything.”
“I am soundly rebuked,” He murmured dryly, even as he hastened to dress in breeches and shirt, from the charity of Central Stores. “I intend to accomplish little today.”
“And as such, I do hope you quite trip over your memory, preferably in a circumstance of great personal embarrassment,” Jayne said with mock severity, and tossed him a loaf of bread from the plate before him. “The caravanserai from over the Wastes is due today. Mayhap something there will jog your poor uncultured mind.”
“And did you not express opinion once that a man who could so easily forget everything need not remember anything?” Jayne had dropped hints of varying degrees regarding the approach of the caravanserai for a long enough that his patience had frayed; enough that even the fisherman had suggested, loudly, that he should agree with Jayne to attend to market on that very day and be done with it.
He, however, felt just as stubbornly not to listen. In his past life, as Jayne later bemoaned, he must have been an extravagantly useless nobleman.
And as such, once he left the small rooming house, nodding politely to neighbors and familiar faces, he began to wander in the opposite direction from the market square, hands in roughwoven pockets and his long jet hair tied at the nape of his neck with a piece of homespun red ribbon. A gift from a girl who had danced him last Equinox past, with shy smiles and a flush as bright as the gift itself; he’d repaid her later on the roof of her rooming house, under a moon that never changed. He couldn’t quite remember her name, which he had to admit, was really rather rude-
Thinking that over, he had already walked himself down three blocks and around a corner to the Archival, and as such nearly walked right into the stranger who had stopped abruptly before him.
“’Tis you… it is you!” To his great astonishment, the stranger had grasped his shoulders, crushingly tight, his voice thick as though with tears. Rather taken aback, he studied the intruder more closely: a muscular man, almost thickset, likely from habitual use of the battered plate armor; the ease with which he wore it spoke of stamina, strength. A clean, honest, relatively comely face, stubble and hair hacked short the color of ripened corn. Blue eyes, wavering on gray, which arrested him with their joyous intensity. Two scabbarded blades, at his waist, a cloak torn at the corners that was caked with the dust of travel. One of the caravanserai guards, mayhap.
“I am sorry,” he said wryly, “But I do not know you, good sir.”
This was greeted with tightening hands and an incredulous stare. “You do not… you do not know me? But you are… your blade, where did you get that, then?”
“I woke up in the Eternal City with only my blade, friend. No memory or past.” He tilts his head, feels an uncommon curiosity finally well within him, an excitement coiling tight, a premonition. “Sir, do you know me?”
“Your…” here a bitter laugh, and the stranger let him go, curling his hands, bowing his head as though in defeat against the malice of the Fates. “Your name is Vayne. Vayne Solidor.”
“And you, friend?” He tested the sound of his name, mouthing it. Vayne. It seemed aright, at least. A strong name, though no memory to string with it.
“My name is Gabran… Noah, my name is Noah. Noah fon Ronsenburg. You were… you are my liege lord, ser. And-” a hesitation long enough to tell, “And I am your friend.”
“Liege of no land I can still belong to, Noah,” Vayne pointed out, and arched his brow a little when Noah seemed to flinch at the sound of his name. “For if you were not aware, this is Limbo. We are all of the dead here.”
“I searched Purgatory for you, ser,” Noah said fiercely, “All of Purgatory, then I spent an age, ser, wandering the Wastes, only to stumble on this city, and then-” Noah stopped, his throat working, squeezing his eyes shut, taking a deep, ragged breath; the pain moved Vayne enough to commiserate.
“Then I am pleased to see you, friend,” Vayne said, in as genial a tone as he could manage. Death had dimmed his interest even in who he had been, but he supposed for the sake of neatness he could have the answer from this man. It might silence Jayne, at least.
“Perhaps a drink? You appear tired from your journey, and I would like to hear more about it.” Banal, mayhap, and he was not quite so curious, but it did seem to calm the man down well enough; Noah followed him in meek silence to the nearest drinking house Vayne could remember. At least the streets were emptier due to the infrequent excitement of a caravanserai visit.
The White Slate was quiet even on normal days, its proprietress a plump lady who had passed into the Eternal City on the cusp of her downward slide before age’s ravages. The alcohol she brewed, from stores taken off Central, and it was heady, sweet and thick. The sun painted golden slats along rough, round tables and crates as chairs, and few clientele older men drinking in silence in the corners of the tavern, rushes at their feet and the ever-present scent of sweat and strong spirits in the air. In the distance, drums and faint shouting indicated that the Market was celebrating the arrival of trade.
Noah seemed sullen now, his eyes fixed on his tankard, and Vayne ventured to jest, gently, “And you didst not think of searching for me in Paradiso, Noah?”
At that, Noah’s lip twitched up, in an odd dreg of dark humor, “No, ser, you would not have been in Paradiso.”
“And you?” Vayne grinned. Somehow, he found that to be a relief. Mayhap he truly was an extravagantly useless nobleman.
“I was in Eden, after my time in Purgatory,” Noah said flatly. “They asked me to drink from Lethe. I refused, so I was left to wander.”
“Refused?”
Noah did not answer for a while, long enough that Vayne stopped watching him, turning his attention instead to the two old women near the counter, playing their eternal games of chess. As far as he had last observed, their games almost always ended in draws, always slow, unhurried, and with tactics that their opponents must have learned to heart long ago. Drifting, he nearly missed Noah’s soft reply.
“To forget past sins. That is why souls drink from Lethe, so they may ascend to Paradiso. To forget you, my Lord, though mayhap I should have drunk deep after all.” Angry disappointment. Vayne fought the instinctive urge to put his palm on the hilt of his blade; he drank instead, warming his cheeks, smiled politely.
“I do not believe,” Vayne observed mildly, “That we had as amiable a relationship as you first intimated, to think it sin.”
“It was sin enough,” Noah said roughly, with unfathomable pain writ so deep that even Vayne felt uncomfortable in its presence, and the rest of the drink passed in silence.
Outside, the eternal sun had meandered high, comfortably warm; rosy with ale Vayne had walked himself back to the Archival before he realized, somewhat belatedly, that Noah was following him. A few steps behind, looking habitual, at that. A guard, then, though a role as mundane as that did not seem to fit someone of Noah’s obvious caliber as a warrior, someone with Noah’s evident, volatile temper, his presence of command. Vayne felt the matter quite unsuited: he was no longer a lord, if he had ever been one of importance enough to require loyalty of someone like Noah, and if he had to have an afterlife his current pace unhurried was well enough to his pleasure.
“I thank you for my name,” Vayne said, wondering how to broach the subject as kindly as possible, “But as you no doubt observed, I am no longer the man you knew save in appearance, and as such, if you had some obligation to me I release you from it.”
Noah glared: it was clear that he had not been so oblivious that he had not seen this coming. “I refuse.”
“Sir,” Vayne tried reason, “Choose carefully. It is clear that our association causes you pain. Go back to Eden. Drink from Lethe and pass to Paradiso. By all reports and belief it does appear to cause eternal bliss, which I can assure you is logically more appreciable than eternal ennui.”
“You are asking me to leave you,” Noah said flatly.
“Aye.”
“No.” Noah folded his arms.
Vayne stifled the spark of irritation within him. Emotion, as Jayne put in one of his more florid days, was a supreme and unmitigated waste of energy in the face of Eternity. “The caravanserai will leave in a week. Do what you wish, but you will be hard pressed to cross the Waste back to Purgatory if you miss it.”
“I walked here,” Noah said simply, with no inflexion that would hint at exaggeration.
Quite a large amount of time ago, around when he had first arrived in the Eternal City, Vayne had tried to explore the outskirts, out of sheer ennui. The Wastes was home to any number of lower anomalies and daemons, which were not much of a danger to anyone legitimately in the First Circle, but the bands of roving, deranged raiders that consisted usually of those who had arrived insane or who had left or been ejected from the Eternal City were a great danger to the unsuspecting. It had been a wonder, Jayne told him later, that he had managed to make it back more or less intact.
Rather impressed now, but refusing to indicate it so, Vayne sighed. “If duty drives you so, could I not order you, as strange as this would sound, to put yourself back towards Heaven?”
Noah seemed to consider this, and the day turned ever stranger, a usually welcome occurrence in Limbo. “Nay.”
“This conversation,” Vayne said, exasperation finally creeping into his tone, “Is ridiculous, and you, sir, are-”
“As stubborn and as unforgiving as the most recalcitrant of mules. Yes. I have heard that from you before.” The humor in the twist to Noah’s lip seemed lighter. “Ser.”
Vayne considered the indignity of throwing up his hands in disgust, and settled instead for stalking away with as much grace as he could muster. A day at the Archival turned quite ruined, with Noah seated a table away and following him even when he ventured to take another book from the shelves; all along, while reading, Vayne could feel the man’s stare upon him, and yet, looking up, Noah would ostensibly be casting his eye over the papers. Treatises on society lost much of their luster, and it was in a mood of poor grace that Vayne finally ventured back to his dwelling, glad that one of the advantages of death meant that eating was more or less recreational.
Noah did not follow him into the house, thankfully, but just as Vayne was about to sleep, still somewhat irrationally irritable at the loss of one day in a string of an eternal series of days, Jayne made a soft sound of amused surprise at the window. The old fisherman was already sound asleep, and as such, it was left to Vayne to comment.
“What do you see?”
“There’s a man sleeping on the street. At the doorstep to our house, nonetheless.”
It was with a mixture of resignation and trepidation that Vayne looked out.
Fifteen minutes later, most of it spent explaining to the sleepy tailor in the single room below why he had to swap pallets for an indefinite amount of time, Vayne pushed the heavy box of his effects into Noah’s bemused hands, sat on the pallet in the narrow room with one set of spare clothes folded in his lap, and stared out into the street. On the bright side, he told himself, ennui was now yesterday’s memory, though he now rather missed it.
“What does this contain, ser?” Noah’s respectful tone, at least, was conciliatory.
“My earthly effects.” Vayne didn’t turn, but there was the curious rustle of fabric and clinking metal.
“Your clothes, yes.” By the sound of it, Noah was folding the scale mail carefully back into the box, and leaving it on the ground, then leaning back against the wall. “The warprince uniform was not one of your favorites.”
“How do I know,” Vayne said, resorting with some reluctance to cruelty, “That you are not lying, sir? Perhaps you are an enemy. Or perhaps I do not know you at all.”
No emotion, only a weary smile, and Vayne had to wonder at who he had once been, that Noah seemed so used to cruelties. “I could tell you your story, ser, and mayhap you can judge that for yourself-”
“Nay,” Vayne said sharply, and amended, when Noah looked startled, “I do not wish to know.”
“Why?” The warrior’s tone was not gruff enough hide a plaintive note.
“How poor a man was I,” Vayne leant forward, folding his legs beneath him, his hands carefully on his thighs, “That it was ‘sin enough’ to be in love with me?”
Noah froze, for one long, blessed moment of silence, that Vayne felt his calculated guess perhaps a little off the mark, until Noah spoke, pitchy and erratic, “Ser, you do not understand, because you do not know, I could tell you, you are taking my words far out of their context-”
“So you did lie.” Understanding this gave him little comfort. “We were not friends.”
“Nor,” Noah snarled, his temper flaring, red-faced now with clenched fists, “Nor, were we quite lovers, Lord Vayne, you had not lovers but bedmates, not friends but pawns.”
“And you?” A little intrigued now, despite himself, Vayne pried. He would not have known if the near dispassion of his curiosity was a trait of his unmitigated self, or a casualty of Limbo.
“And I, I, was neither, both… not guard, not with Bergan, not pawn, you never did respect me as much as your other damned ‘pieces’, not a bedmate, for there was no benefit for you in that, ser, you had my love but you never returned it, never even acknowledged it. So. I suppose I was your dog. Something you picked out of a war you and your kind started, fed and kenneled and renamed to do your bidding.” An angry breath, another, “And yet, ser, yet I left Eden for you, I have walked through the terraces of Purgatory and over the Wastes, and you, you do not remember me.”
Desperate anger fled to ringing silence, but Vayne did not falter. “What did I call you?”
“I…” Noah exhaled, his eyes straying to the window, then back to his feet. “Gabranth. You called me Gabranth.”
“Hnn.” Vayne unbuckled his blade from his belt, ignored how Noah tensed, and laid it carefully on the ground. “Noah is a better name.”
“It is my birth name,” Noah said, uncertainly and unnecessarily. He wore bewilderment better than impotent frustration.
“How did you die?”
“You killed me.” Noah seemed only resigned.
“This is a rather more ridiculous situation than I had originally felt,” Vayne observed dryly. “I am more or less a ghost, and you appear out of nowhere claiming a number of rather remarkable propositions, not the least of which that I had been the cause of your death, and that you, despite it all, had-”
“You also,” Noah noted, with a faint, mirthless grin, “Were once an Emperor of a rather large Empire, and you destroyed a set of powerful beings akin to Gods.”
“If this is in jest, to a nameless man it is rather tasteless.” Noah, however, only returned his stare evenly, and eventually it was Vayne who slumped back against the wall, arms folded at the back of his head, against the window. In the Eternal City, the night was always pleasantly cool. “Your armor, stack it in the corner.”
“Ser-”
“You cannot rest in that, and you stink of iron and oil. There is a facility in the basement. Clean yourself up and come back.” Vayne tossed him the clothes, and huffed out a breath when Noah didn’t move. “I can assure you that I will not take the opportunity to flee whilst you are occupied in your toilet. It would be greatly undignified.”
Noah smiled then, brittle and thin. It did not suit honest features as his, though the mocking salute oddly did. The armor and scabbards were shucked off in clanking pieces to repose as a hazard by the doorway for the unobservant, and Vayne pretended dispassion as Noah stripped off his padded undershirt for corded muscle, furious scars mottled and pale with age. Vayne recognized gunshot, blade and crossbow, and neater, thinner grids that could only come from a whip.
He looked up to another humorless smile too knowing for his comfort, before Noah dropped his eyes and left. Vayne exhaled. As a whole, the denizens of the Eternal City were fairly amiable, or at the least, indifferent. Vayne had no real idea how Noah had preserved himself so long in Limbo: Vayne himself had tried, for longer than he could comfortably count, keeping active, becoming conversant with people of different worlds and, to his early pride, alien languages, but even he had long succumbed. It was easier. And besides, this was technically Hell.
Vayne was studying Noah’s blades when the man returned, cleaned up and looking uncomfortable, the borrowed clothes too long at the wrists and ankles and too tight over broad shoulders. “You gave me those.”
The blades were pitted and chipped, eloquent enough of hard use. Vayne slipped them back into worn scabbards and propped them against the wall, now unsure, but Noah spoke first, again without inflection. “I can sleep outside the room.”
“On the ground?” Vayne asked, incredulous, then recalled that up until the hasty invitation indoors, Noah had actually been-
“’Tis not,” Noah said heavily, though he closed the door, “As though you have not asked as much of me before, ser.”
Vayne was no longer sure he truly wished to know who he had been. “Next you will tell me I murdered my family.”
“Ah…” Noah began, paused, then added, somewhat apologetically, “There were mitigating circumstances. And er, not all of them.”
“No more revelations for today, please.” Vayne rubbed his eyes and lay down, rolling to a side, and frowned when Noah merely looked confused. “Well?”
“My Lord Vayne, I am not sure this is-”
“This is enough for two - if barely - and if you do not kick,” Vayne said dryly, noted the sudden flush with some amusement. “Did you not imply as much that we-”
“Never on your bed, I-”
“Noah, ‘tis late, and you are annoying me more than I imagined possible.”
Noah snorted, but lay on the very edge, hesitant and so tense that Vayne was beginning to scent sweat. Noah was nervous, and Vayne supposed there was likely some truth in what the man had sketched in not so many words: this only amused him.
“Never on the bed?”
“You did not think it appropriate, ser.” Noah said tightly, and oh, the wounded pride in that that had so obviously long festered. “Nor gentleness, or even to kiss, I didst say, I was not-”
Some impulse had Vayne roll around, grasp Noah’s chin, and press their lips together so roughly that their teeth clicked; Noah made a stifled sound of sheer astonishment that made Vayne smirk against him, then a low, hungry moan that had Vayne roll atop him, pin his shoulders to the ground and force his tongue into his mouth, his thigh between Noah’s legs, feeling the hot press of swelling arousal against the thin fabric of his breeches. Well trained. Noah’s hands stayed flat beside his flanks, even in his evident shock, as Vayne drew back and lay on the pallet.
“There. Your kiss. Now be silent.”
Noah stifled his whimper by pressing his wrist into his mouth, breathing hard, and closed his eyes, even as his free hand knotted itself in the cheap cloth. Satisfied, if now disconcerted by his own easy cruelty, Vayne slept.
Today, or this day, or the last, Vayne woke to Noah’s intense scrutiny and ignored it, tying his hair with the ribbon. Noah looked tired, his eyes reddened, an erection tenting borrowed breeches. Vayne ordered him, somewhat self-consciously, to make himself presentable before meeting outside, and retreated to his old room. Jayne, at least, was unchanging, and the fisherman was gone.
“How is your new guest?”
“It appears I am called Vayne. Vayne Solidor.”
“What a pleasant and remarkable similarity to my name.” Jayne looked approving. “Perhaps you were fated to live about me after all.”
“Please restrain your overweening ego.”
“Oh, sir Solidor, but then you would be bored, so very bored. By the by, I struck up fair conversation with the tailor, and he is willing to undergo this exchange for as long as you wish.” Jayne’s nonchalance was clearly feigned, but Vayne felt oddly grateful.
“Thank you.”
“Ah, well, t’was just a passing fancy,” Jayne seemed taken aback by Vayne’s gratitude, “And besides, it would have been rather strange for the fisherman and I, were you to take your lover abed before us.”
“He is not my lover,” Vayne corrected.
“Mayhap not yet,” Jayne said slyly, and to Vayne’s snort, added, “All of us saw how he looked at you, sir, and you, you are finally awoken.”
“Awoken? Boy, your riddles are poor plays upon the language.”
“The Eternal City is static only for some of its denizens, dear Vayne. Step outside.” Jayne paused, looked rather regretfully at the bottom right half of the room, and added, “Pity. You’ll not see the fisherman again, nor the tailor, and I doubt you’ve said your goodbyes.”
Out the door, to Vayne’s surprise, the sun beats hot upon his hair and his shoulders. It seems only consequential to kiss Noah, who blinked, and then to set off for the nearest Gate, the East, while the man was still gasping incoherently.
At the Archway, what was once the Wastes looked to be an endless, rolling plain of gorgeous, green, grass.
He kissed Noah again, when the man caught up. Noah breathed hard through his nose, and Vayne dragged gloved palms to his own hips; thick fingers curled tight, then swept to the small of his back.
“What do you see?”
“Grass.” Noah’s magnificent indifference earned him another kiss. Contemplating the impossible in Noah’s arms, Vayne stared out at the grass even as the other man panted his desire hot against his neck. “Please, ser, oh, please-”
He had Noah suck in the shadow between the East wall and the first terrace, against a faded poster with the flagstones cool beneath his sandaled feet; Vayne curled his hands behind Noah’s skull and pushed deeper, growling, but Noah merely moaned, muted and delicious, his gloved hands within his own breeches, steel greaves scraping against stone. When he reached orgasm Vayne held Noah in place; he choked, swallowed, and later, hoarse from the stretch of Vayne’s prick and stuttering from arousal, Noah begged, begged until Vayne’s curt nod allowed his completion to stain the sandstone walls.
Gods.
The caravanserai were gone from the market, or at least, no longer visible to him. Vayne voiced his displeasure; Noah’s smile seemed foolish, now, and as such, maliciously, Vayne managed to give the man the slip in the bazaar crowd, running a winding three blocks away to see the rest of the city that now was different. The Archival was the same, at least, but the streets were more crowded now, with more motley colors, riding animals of every shape and monstrous size, merchants, musicians, and the gaiety of Balance. Vayne slowed to a trot, then a walk. A dancing girl, tambourine in hand and every layer of her sweeping dress a finery of fiery red silk, was a whirling dervish on an emerald carpet, around which sat three old men with drums; a small crowd around her, clapping, laughing, and Vayne loved, then didn’t, and turned to the nearest, a thin man in an odd hat, black jacket and breeches of a weave Vayne had never seen. He wanted to ask where are we, but the man merely smiled, pointed upward, and turned back to the dance. Of course.
Noah caught up with him a street away from the rooming house, sweating, reproachful yet relieved, and Vayne pushed him against a wall and kissed him roughly to the giggles of a pair of passing girls, ceramic urns on their heads and their lithe bodies swathed in white scarves; kissed Noah until the man began to shudder and twist eagerly against him. Somehow they made it home, stumbling, where Vayne’s fingers seemed to remember the fastest way to help shed a man’s armor, and he had his long fingers curled between Noah’s legs even as his lover arched and dug toes into the sheets and cried his name. Fingers and spit somehow slicked the way, if barely, and Noah’s expression bunched in agony and ecstasy when Vayne breached him with his prick, marveling at the fit, a hand still clenched around Noah’s swollen cock, his other clawed into narrow hips. He thrust once, twice, and Noah’s cries became a hoarse shout that ended in convulsions and wet bubbling hot over Vayne’s hands; Vayne wiped fingers fastidiously on Noah’s flanks before bracing his hands on both hips. He fucked Noah bloody and dazed, his desire and the sounds of their rough union an envelope around him, the prison sweet as he bent to grind deep and take Noah’s mouth; Vayne felt Noah’s prick twitch weakly against his belly, and he remembered snarling in answer, his completion violent enough for the blood to roar in his ears.
Jayne had many sly comments at the eating room, afterwards, to Vayne’s minor mortification. He finally managed a word in edgewise, when the boy took a breather.
“I see only half the rooming house, now.”
“Aye, some are lost as you were.”
“Was this not Limbo?”
“Aye, for some as you were.” Jayne delighted far too much in riddles. “Often, a prayer, a revelation, or a wish is the key, yes, the key! Self-awareness, self-knowledge, likely, very likely! Do you remember yourself yet?”
“Nay.” Vayne paused. “Mayhap I would not want to.”
“Oh, ser.” Jayne said, pityingly, “Then you will not be whole. But I feel Tanelorn will be on this plane for a ways. Mayhap a little exploration would work your mind well.”
“Tanelorn?”
“I gave you this City’s name to you when we first met, sir, but you could not yet remember.” Jayne grinned. “Sell your fine clothes at the faire and buy yourself a mount, aye? But ‘ware, if you lose Tanelorn, you’ll be hard pressed to come back.”
“I do not need a child’s advice,” Vayne smiled, lopsided, as Noah finally made an appearance in the eating room, limping, rubbing his eyes and dressed in Vayne’s spare clothes. “But thank you.”
“Aye, aye, you are ready to wander, Vayne Solidor. May you always have the Balance.” With that enigmatic blessing, Jayne said no more.
Today, this day, or the last, two sets of fine armor buy a pair of strange, four legged mounts with powerful necks and flowing manes (horses, so they were called) and two sets of serviceable scale mail, some supplies, a map; Vayne left the eternal city with Noah at his back and the sun to the east, and the rest of the multiverse before him-
-fin-